Fluffiness Rules Everything for a While
by CrayolaMarkers
Summary: PERCABETH, of course. It started out as pure fluff -- and don't get me wrong, the first chapter is -- but it sort of turning into an adventure-romance from Annabeth's POV. Sphinxes, kisses, awkward moments, check!
1. We Go Spelunking

_A/N: Didn't have the imagination to make up a backstory, so let's assume that this is after __Titan's Curse __ and Grover, Percy, and Annabeth are hiking through a forest near the beach to get across America for some quest. A scene like this will undoubtedly pop up in __Battle of the Labyrinth__ anyway! And, of course, it's so fluffy it makes Peeps marshmallows look dense. Corny? Cheesy? Of course! (ANNABETH'S POV)_

We didn't stop tearing through the forest, if that tells you anything. Actually, thanks to the Jellyfish and his goat, we took the "thing that looked like a shortcut", which was code for the trail that had the most beetles and – ick – spiderwebs.

Grover was doing a weird blinking thing, like every few seconds he'd shiver, blink, and look left and right as if he were about to cross a busy intersection. Percy was almost as bad, because even though he was trying to act all confident, you could tell he wanted to turn around. I was being Annabeth the Grouchy and pretended not to notice that either of them were feeling as cold, wet, and tired as I was.

But Percy definitely noticed. "Hey," he said, crushing a vine into the dirt and gingerly stepping over it. "You'll thank me when we get there in an hour or two."

"We're not going to get there in an hour or two. We'll be lucky if we get there at all."

Grover shivered again. "Percy, maybe Annabeth's got the right idea…"

"Shut up," he said tiredly.

I shrugged. "I don't really mind if we're slow anymore. It's not like we can turn back, now that we've gone so far."

"That's a really bad apology."

"Who said that was an apology?"

Percy shook his head, not in the mood to argue. "Tree root,"

I stumbled over it. At least the trees were getting sparser. We were partly walking along dirt, partly along sand. It was like the ground couldn't make up its mind whether it wanted to be a forest or a rocky beach. I wondered if I should say something, but didn't. "So," I tried to think of a conversation-starter. "What did you guys want to be when you grew up? Before we got into all these quests?"

"A searcher," Grover said immediately.

Percy was more cynical. "Why do you care about what we wanted to be?"

"I don't, really. I'm just bored."

He paused for a moment. "I don't know," he said finally. "Does it matter, for half-bloods? Don't we all end up being warriors or heroes?"

I was about to answer him when I felt a _plunk_ on my head.

"Did you feel that?" I asked, rubbing the place where it had hit. _Plunk_.

"Feel what?" they said in unison. Both boys stopped walking and starting looking up. I never get why people do that – looking up when they think there's rain. I mean, you're not only going to get hit in the eye, but you're not going to see rain better against a big, grayish sky than you would on the ground.

"I don't see anything," Grover said stupidly.

"Look at the ground," I pointed to the dirt. Little ice balls were littering the ground, frosting the black soil like dark gingerbread. "See? Hail."

"It's not that bad," Percy resumed his march and hacked down another spiderweb. "Keep going. We really _won't _be there in an hour if we keep stopping every five minutes."

"I'm not stopping every five minutes!"

"Oh, right. That was definitely the first time."

"Look, if you're still mad about me stopping to tie a ponytail, I'd like to see _you_ with two feet of hair and no rubber band!"

"That's different!" He insisted.

"Oh, really?"

"_Yes_."

I scoffed, "Exactly, how?"

"Um, guys?" Grover poked us both on the back. "I don't want to interrupt, but…"

He didn't have to go any further. We both snapped out of the argument and looked at the ground again. The hailstones were falling five times as fast, and were getting golf-ball sized. "Ow," I whimpered quietly.

"Yeah, I'm getting bruised," Grover said to Percy.

He rubbed his back, wincing. "Let's find a tree. Or a cave."

"A cave," I agreed, hitching my backpack over my head and looking around frantically. Suddenly, as if by magic or incredible luck, there it was. "A cave! Grover! Percy! _Look!_" I flailed my hand at the pile of boulders lying at the foot of a cliff on the rocky beach. It didn't look terribly comfortable, but that didn't stop us. I was already halfway there before the other two noticed where I was pointing.

Percy panted to keep up. "_That's_ just plain lucky."

"I don't question luck, Seaweed-Brain!" I shouted as I dove into the stone-cold den.

A strange hush fell over us the moment we jumped inside. The rattling _plunk!_ of the hail quieted to a muffled _whoosh _every few seconds. Without nature's background noises, it felt awkward. Too quiet.

I broke the ice with a bitingly witty remark. "Ouch,"

"Yeah," agreed Percy.

Grover winced and rubbed his head. "You said it," he said, sniffing the moist air. "No monsters, I think. But we have another problem."

"Angry gods? Goddesses?" Percy asked.

"No," Grover pointed up. "The roof's too thin."

I groaned. A thin roof could only mean one thing.

"Woah!" Percy said excitedly. "You can tell that just by smelling?"

"Nope," Grover shook his curly-haired head. "I can tell because hail is _still_ hitting my head."

There was the sound again: _plunk_, _plunk_.

"It's going to get worse if we don't fix it now," I said sadly. "Should we see if there's another cave down the cliff?"

"Nah, I checked when I was running down," said Percy. "This is the only one within miles, probably."

"Fine, a _tree_ then," I rolled my eyes and tapped a foot. "In half an hour, the top of this place will have collapsed on us. Then what?"

"Then we hope that the hail's stopped."

"Never mind, Jellyfish!"

Grover seemed very disturbed at the prospect of having rocks collapse on him. "There's clay in the forest soil," he said quickly. "It won't work to keep out the hail by itself, but it could patch up the roof and keep it from falling. Right?"

"Yeah," I said. "But how're we going to get any clay? I can't dig."

"I can," he said miserably. "I'll go get some. The hail won't be _as_ bad under the trees."

We wished him good luck and watched him lope off into the distance. Suddenly the cave was quieter than ever.

I shivered. "I hope he knows where to go. I don't want to see him come back with a bruised skull."

"Or crumpled horns," Percy added. "Are you all right?"

"Of course," I said indifferently. "You?"

"Yeah, but…" He paused. After a moment, he finally turned to look at me and said, "I've been thinking about what you said, about what I wanted to be when I grew up."

"Well, what?" I urged.

"Let me finish," he snapped. "I was _going_ to ask if you could answer my question. You know. Don't half-bloods all end up being warriors or something?"

"It's a tricky subject," I admitted. "There are the obvious ones, like Theseus or Hercules or Achilles. Yeah, they all ended up heroes. But there was this one girl at camp who was, like, nineteen when I first came here, and now she's the secretary to the C.E.O. of the company that makes Cheetos. Go figure."

"How'd she swing that? Wouldn't monsters have killed her the second she let her guard down?"

"No. She was the daughter of a normal dude and a minor goddess, so nothing would really…" I stopped.

Percy sneered. "So, pretty much, you can live a normal life _as long as your parent's not a major god_."

"Oh, shut up," I said irritably.

"So we're screwed?" he asked again.

"You can be whatever you _want_ to be, Percy. Just promise me you won't do something stupid and be flipping burgers the rest of your life."

"Huh?" he said.

I tapped my foot and fiddled with my necklace. "You don't have to be some big warrior-dude, but you're the sea god's son. Do something big, okay? Like, save the next Titanic from sinking or build a huge dam or something."

He thought about it for a minute, and smiled a little. "Maybe. How about you? What did you want to be?"

"You know," I said automatically. "An architect."

"Yeah, but since when?"

"I always have. Like I said, I like building things, not just washing them away," I glared at him with an eyebrow raised. "And the earlier I get started, the better."

He scooted back against the wall and held up his hands in surrender. "Sheesh! Don't get all touchy, but why so focused on your job already?"

"Well," I stammered. "I don't know. It's good to be focused on _something_."

"There's more stuff than a job, though," he said. "My mom wanted to be a novelist, but she had me, so…"

"Her one mistake," I quipped.

He punched my arm and went on. "So what about normal stuff? You're never going to get a first job or have a family or any of—"

"You want a family?" I yelped, astonished. "_You_?"

"Uh, I guess so," he said, looking surprised and like he'd never really thought of it. "It'd be boring to be by yourself for, like, ever."

"It would be independent," I said loftily.

"No, it'd be stupid," he insisted. "Doing your architect-y stuff all day, then coming home to an empty apartment? Are you kidding me?"

"Ooh, but what about Percy the family man?" I laughed derisively. "_He'd_ come home to an adoring Mrs. Jackson and the kiddies, right?"

"Shut up," he said. "I don't want one _now_, but what's wrong with having a normalfamily? When you're, you know, older."

"Because _neither of us knows what a normal family is!_" I hissed, standing up. _Bonk_.

"Your head," Percy warned me, too late.

"Why, thank you, Fishbrain." I muttered, rubbing the place where it had slammed against the ceiling of the cave. I sat back down, calmer. "So are you and Thalia planning the wedding already?"

"Thalia?!" he squeaked. "What are you talking about?!"

"Oh, you know," I said, smiling sweetly. "You've got to be all _normal_, so you've decided you'll start going out with Thalia."

"Gross," he shook his head quickly, embarrassed. "She's a Hunter, anyway."

"Hunters often break their vow," I reminded him. "They just don't get to follow Artemis anymore, you know."

"Still! Seriously, don't joke about that. No. No way. It's just…" he shuddered.

"Why not?" I sneered cruelly. "You hang around so much, she's funny, she's pretty, you want…"

"Wrong!" he said triumphantly. "Totally wrong. First, no, she isn't that pretty, or funny, or whatever. Second? Heck, I think a _lot_ of girls are pretty. I thought _you_ were pretty when I first…" he shut up, but not soon enough.

"What?" I asked, my anger vanishing. "What'd you just say?"

"I said, she's not that pretty or funny," he repeated quickly.

I shook my head. "No, after that," I said.

"I think a lot of girls are pretty, so it wouldn't matter even if I thought she was…"

"After _that_," I said, growing impatient.

"That's all I said," he finished, looking at the ceiling with incredible interest. "Wow, hail's coming through that thing almost as bad as it is outside. When's Grover coming back?"

"You think I'm pretty," I said, saying it more to myself than to him.

"Huh?" he turned back to me.

I grinned. "You think I'm _pretty_," I sang loudly.

"I said I _used_ to think that!" he shouted over me, blushing. "When I was in a coma, half-dead! Like, three years ago!"

"Uh-uh," I said, laughing. "You're lying,"

"Am not!"

"Are so," I stifled another laugh. "And you know what else?" He didn't know what else, but I told him anyway. "I think you _like_ me."

His eyes widened. "I do not like--"

But he never finished. And I know this for a fact, because, when he couldn't say anything else, the silence just hung in the air, and there was nothing left to do but close our eyes and kiss.

So we did.

The second I leaned in, my head started spinning and I felt like Hermes' sandals had lifted me at least fifteen feet off the ground – since, I don't know about Percy, but this had never happened to me before. Ever. We sat there, kneeling and kissing for who knows how long. I would've said a couple days, but it was probably only a few seconds. The sound of the hail stopped in my mind, the cave went away. I honestly felt like I was flying.

But all that spinning and floating was interrupted by the maniac clapping and sobbing of one very emotional satyr.

"Grover!" both of us screamed, tearing apart to stare at him.

"That was beautiful," he sniffed. "Absolutely beautiful."

"How long have you been here?!" Percy exclaimed.

"Oh, a while," he said, brushing away a small tear. "Around the point where Annabeth started saying stuff about you and a Mrs. Jackson, and you yelled, and she bumped her head, and you gave everything away, and…"

"Why didn't you _come in_?" Percy asked through gritted teeth.

"What, and ruin all that?" he said. "Besides, you were yelling. I didn't want to interrupt."

Percy let out a deep breath and leaned against the cave wall.

I shook my head. "I can't believe we didn't see you there. Did you really see everything?"

"I just told it back to you, didn't I?" Grover said, plopping down next to us. "And I brought the clay, so _ha_, you lovebirds!"

He started patching up the holes with the thick clay he'd found in the dirt. Percy and I just stared ahead uncomfortably. Who knows what he was thinking? All I thought, as I shook my head to make sure this all was real, was: _My gods – I think I just lost my first kiss to Seaweed Brain!_

And worse, I think I was actually okay with that.


	2. Percy Nearly Has His Head Bitten Off

Grover's clay helped. Muffled _thuds_ plopped on the cave roof, but they gradually softened and grew farther and farther apart. At long last we ventured out of the cave to beaming sunlight.

"Looks a lot brighter," I noted, trotting along awkwardly behind, um, Percy. "I don't think it's been this nice since we've left from camp."

They both agreed. The three of us chit-chatted for the next couple of miles -- mostly to fill up the uncomfortable space hovering between us. _Please,_ I kept praying. _Don't let either of them bring up the kiss. Or what I said about him liking me. Please._

The beach we were walking across transformed into grassland, framed by hills on both sides: it was just meadowy, flowery fields. Pretty as it was, an eerie feeling stirred within me.

"Guys?" I said. "Why does it seem...weird here?"

Grover cringed. "It's not just me, then. I've been smelling monster for the past half-mile."

"That can't be good," Percy said. He stopped and squinted into the distance. "Uh-oh. Don't look now, but it looks like there's a huge cliff down there."

He was right. Far ahead, the cheerful meadow stopped abruptly, cragging into a stony cliff. While the hills continued on both sides, the chasm gaped open like a yawning mouth -- quiet, but evil-looking, too. "Oh, boy," I sighed. "What now?"

"It's the Theban Gorge," Grover said, trembling. "If I'm not mistaken, a certain monster struck the ground with her claw some two hundred years ago, a while after the flame moved to America. The gorge erupted from her claw, and, well...this is _not_ good." He began to trot backwards, closer to the meadow.

Percy raised an eyebrow. "'She'? What kind of monster is this?"

Before Grover could answer, a pale gold wildcat leapt, roaring, from the chasm. She pounced forward before any of us could even think. With a swat of her giant, powerful tail, she sent Grover flying behind her into the gorge.

"GROVER!" we screamed, rushing to the edge where he had vanished.

"I'll make my own introductions, thank you," the wildcat said quietly. She turned on us. "Which one of you is next? The daughter of Athena, or son of Poseidon?"

Her body was that of a lioness, but her head was one of a cruelly beautiful woman -- raven-black hair, red lips, and penetrating cat-eyes. Shimmering golden wings arched behind her, and I immediately recognized who this was.

"You're the..." I stuttered. "The...um..."

"I am the Sphinx," she said. "And probably the last thing you'll see before you die."

"Where's Grover?" Percy demanded.

She rolled her eyes. "Goodness, what is it with you half-bloods? He's in the gorge, obviously. Where did you _think_ he went?"

Percy snarled almost as bad as the Sphinx had.

"Oh, he might live," she mused. "Satyrs do have a way of surviving terrible falls. But not half-bloods, I'm afraid."

She crouched, ready to pounce, but I was faster.

"Wait!" I begged. "We wish to hear the riddles. Please. Don't kill us yet."

Percy looked at me as if I'd grown another arm. "Riddles? How can you think of _riddles_ at a time like this?"

"It could save us," I said breathlessly. "If we're wise enough...she is bound to save our lives."

The Sphinx wrinkled her perfect nose. "You're only prolonging your death, child. Nobody answers all three correctly. One, yes. Two, maybe. But I have been asking riddles for centuries, and three of mine in a row are too much for wise men. What makes you think you can answer all three?"

Percy looked like he sort of agreed with her, but didn't back down. "We still want to hear the riddles," he said stubbornly.

Her bloodred lips curled into an evil smile. "Fine, foolish children," she sniffed, curling onto the nearby boulder to sun herself while she asked us the questions. "Here is your first riddle: What goes by four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs at night?"

"It is man!" I yelled quickly before Percy could open his mouth.

A snarling noise and narrowing of eyes from the Sphinx followed. "Correct," she murmured.

Percy stared at me, slack-jawed and wide-eyed. "How do you _know_ that?"

"Oedipus got the same riddle," I explained. "You've never heard it before? Four legs is a baby -- he crawls, so he uses four -- two is an adult, and three is an old man, because he uses a cane and..."

"Your _next _riddle!" The Sphinx said loudly. "From what does a stench come when it is alive, but smells sweet when dead?"

My neck tightened. I'd not only never heard this one, but it made no sense. All animals naturally began to smell bad after they died, thanks to decay. Some of them might smell bad when they were alive, too, but I couldn't think of any that smelled _good_ after they were dead. Maybe it was a plant. Lavender, maybe? It was perfumey when it was dried...but it was perfumey when it was alive, too. Nuts! Could it be that meat-flower, the one that...

"Bacon," Percy shouted over my thoughts.

I squealed, "What the heck?"

"Correct," the Sphinx growled, platinum claws screeching against the sandstone. She was getting surlier by the minute, and probably hungrier too. "But you still have one last riddle to complete."

"Go ahead," Percy started to say, but I yanked on his shoulder before he could go any further.

"What was that about?" I hissed. "Bacon? Excuse me?"

"Bacon's a pig when it's alive," he said. "And pigs smell bad, but bacon smells..."

"Never mind that, Seaweed Brain. Why did you just blurt it out without consulting me first? That could get us killed!"

"But it didn't," he said smugly. "And you didn't consult me about the first riddle."

"Whatever. We'll talk about the last one, right?"

"Fine."

"Fine!"

"Your _last riddle_," the Sphinx interrupted angrily. She begin to rise from the boulder, taking slow steps toward us. "Why was Andrew not arrested after murdering twenty three people?"

My heart stopped. This was worse than the last one -- too much room for wishy-washy answers. Even if we thought we found an answer that sort of made sense, it wouldn't be the true answer the Sphinx was waiting to hear.

And we'd be torn to half-blood ribbons.

"Okay," I whispered. "Huddle."

We clumped into a two-person huddle.

"Andrew murdered twenty three people...but that's too many for a one-time murder..." I said anxiously.

"They could be ants," Percy suggested. "Andrew steps on an ant colony and kills twenty-three ants. See?"

"No, stupid, she said people! People, not ants!"

He glared at me. "What's _your _idea?"

"Twenty three...twenty three..." I snapped my fingers. "Andrew's an executioner. He injects twenty three people with lethal injections, kills them, and he doesn't go to jail because it's legal!"

Percy looked uncomfortable. "I thought she said he murdered them."

"No, she said _killed, _I'm pretty sure," I said.

He backed out of the huddle for a second to face the Sphinx. "Um, 'scuse me? Could we have a repeat of that question, please?"

"NO REPEATING OF THE RIDDLE!" The Sphinx roared.

Percy ducked back to look at me again. "You sure she said _kill_?"

"I think so," I said, a nervous twinge in my voice. He must have seen me shivering, because he quit shooting me blaming looks.

"Want to say the answer with me?" he asked, a little kinder this time.

I nodded. Percy broke away and looked up at the Sphinx's lionlike figure: cruel, angry, and waiting for an answer.

"Because," he yelled. "Andrew is..." he paused and looked at me expectantly.

I shouted with him, "AN EXECUTIONER!"

There was a moment of deadly silence -- our answer ringing as an echo in the cold, early-spring air. Then the Sphinx's mouth spread to a sharp, toothy grin, and my heart plummeted.

"Wrong answer," she said softly.

_SLASH!_

Her gleaming silver claws cut through the air to graze my neck before I tumbled out of the way. "PERCY!" I screamed, praying he'd had the brains to grab Anasklumos as soon as she started to jump.

The Sphinx grinned at me before raising a sharp-pointed paw above my throat. I hyperventilated -- where was that Jellyfish?! "Percy," I whispered softly. "Now would be a really, really, really good time to step in...!"

I closed my eyes, waiting for the attack to come. But instead, I heard a furry _kerplunk_.

I opened one eyelid to find the Sphinx growling at Percy, who crouched on a nearby boulder. Red bloomed from the lioness's shoulder, and a heavy-looking rock lay, blood-splattered, on the ground beside her.

"Come and get me, Kittywad!" Percy shouted, holding another big rock and standing his ground.

The Sphinx roared and pounced on the boulder just a split second after Percy leapt out of the way and drew his sword. She winced at the glittering sight of celestial bronze, but didn't back away. Percy slashed at her throat, but she dodged him. He stabbed again -- once, twice, three times. His fourth jab cut through the Sphinx's fur, leaving another scarlet cut.

_Yeah,_ I cheered silently as I fumbled for my bronze knife. _Go, Jellyfish!_

But our victory was short-lived.

The Sphinx snarled and used her hind legs to knock Percy's arms away from Riptide. The sword clattered away and she quickly pounced on it, anchoring it to the stony cliff floor so it couldn't reappear in his pocket. "Enough games!" she cried, baring pointy-looking teeth. My heart pounded as I tried to crawl over to her, bronze knife in hand. Percy was trying to inch away, but there wouldn't be enough time. "I've changed my decision. First, I'll devour the son of the sea--"

_Whap-whap-whap_, three gleaming silver arrows swished through the air and through her pale gold neck. The Sphinx's eyes widened for an instant, then recognition flashed on her face. A second later, she exploded into a fountain of shimmering gold dust.

A band of fifteen or so young teen girls rose slowly from the hill on our left. Clad in long denim shorts and shining silver tank tops, they lowered their deadly bows and strode toward us at a leisurely pace. One girl, older than the rest, led them at the front of the pack.

"Ugh. For heaven's sake, do you always need us to babysit you?"

It was Thalia. Daughter of Zeus.


	3. We Rock Climb to our Doom

_A/N: Sorry it's been a while. I LOVE everyone's kind comments :D Seriously, guys, every one just makes my day. Thanks for taking the time to review. And I apologize in advance for you Thalia-lovers who wanted her to never change. But it wouldn't be real. She's a Hunter now, and things will be different...you'll see what I mean._

_UPDATE: Eek. You guys were right. I forgot how mean I made Artemis...I lost my 3rd book and forgot that she isn't really smarmy, she's actually pretty nice. Changed some language to reflect that. _

Percy and I gaped at her. Thalia was still Thalia, but...changed. Her freckled face glowed with power, and her spiky haircut was gone, replaced by a soft, layered black bob. The eyeliner had vanished, leaving her blue eyes sparkling with an energy all their own. And the chain jewelry? Except for her silver bracelet, Aegis, they'd disappeared completely.

"Thalia?" Percy yelped. "What...?"

"Is that a 'thank you'?" she snorted. "You were about to get your ungrateful butt kicked back there."

"Thalia," I said slowly. "What happened to you? You're, uh, different."

Her smug smile melted away. She looked down at her chain-less arms, fingernails no longer painted black, feet clad in silver running shoes instead of combat boots. "Yeah," she whispered. "I didn't want to be."

I just stood there, stunned. Sure, I could believe it when Bianca di Angelo had practically transformed after becoming a Hunter. But I hardly knew Bianca. This was Thalia, _Thalia._ She'd been the same full-of-attitude goth kid since we'd met when she was twelve. Now, even though she seemed more powerful and stronger than ever, it was as though the Thalia I knew was gone.

"Hey," she said with a wobbly smile. "It's still me, you know? I'm just a little...cleaned up. To be part of the Hunt, you give yourself up to Lady Artemis. She didn't like my style that much," Thalia looked over her shoulder. "Here she comes now."

An auburn-haired twelve-year-old strode over the hill and toward us confidently. Her silvery hunting dress shimmering in the sunlight, she cradled a bow in one hand and what looked like a ferret in the other. "Percy Jackson. Annabeth Chase," she bobbed her head toward us in turn. "Hello again."

"Lady Artemis," Percy and I bowed our heads. But even as I bowed, I wanted to snap at her, _what'd you do with Thalia? _

Artemis set the ferret down on the rocky ground and stared over the edge. "As much as we would like to chatter here," she said crisply. "Your friend Grover's chance of living is shrinking by the second. Come. We will talk on the way."

She snapped her fingers and threw her bow into the air. With a brisk snapping noise, it twisted into a silver spike. A thick gray rope blossomed from inside the spike -- it was a grappling hook.

"Well," Thalia . "What are you waiting for?" Flicking her wrist, she sent two more bows flying toward us with the grace of frisbees. They reshaped into grappling hooks in mid-air and landed neatly at our feat. She turned her back to us and followed Artemis, who had already clipped her hook to the top of the rocks and was belaying down quickly.

"Uh, guys?" Percy waved his hand like a forgotten tagalong. "What about us?"

"Snap your hook to the cliff," Thalia replied, swinging a leg over the cliff wall. "It's easier than it looks. Oh, and by the way -- Andrew was a hurricane."

We gave her a look. "What?"

"The riddle. You got it wrong -- Andrew murdered twenty three people and didn't go to jail because Andrew was a 1992 hurricane."

Percy and I dropped our jaws for the second time in five minutes. When the shock faded, Percy let out a monstrous groan.

"That is so _cheap!_" He exclaimed, grabbing his hook from the ground and yanking it onto the rocks. "Hurricanes. Don't. _Murder_."

Thalia looked pained. "Well, yeah, that's what I would have said too, but _murder_ apparently just means unlawful killing of human beings."

"I can't believe that Sphinx," I muttered as I walked over and clipped my grappling hook to the cliff. With a swing of my leg, I gently lowered myself into the abyss, hanging onto my hook's rope for dear life. The seafoam green meadow vanished above me as I followed Thalia's lead and bounced down two or three times. "What kind of riddles are those? Bacon? Hurricane Andrew?"

"You'd be surprised what a monster with a couple millenia on her hands can come up with," Thalia said breezily, bobbing down the rock walls. "Artemis told me..."

"That I wanted to speak with Annabeth," the preteen goddess swung over to our side of the cliff, the ferret still clinging to her silver-draped shoulder.

"Oh, all right," Thalia said agreeably. She looked at her boss patiently.

"Well," Artemis stifled a laugh. "I want to speak with Annabeth...alone."

My two friends glanced at each other, embarassed but good-humored, then shrugged and belayed to the right a couple hundred feet.

When they were at least half a football field away, Artemis slowly lost her happy demeanor. Dolefully, she swished her reddish curled head toward me. "What you are doing is not wise," she began. "You of all people should know that."

"What I'm doing?" I squeaked nervously. "What are you talking about?"

"I think you know what I'm talking about," she said, not unkindly. "You and that boy over there. Poseidon's son."

I drooped a little as I tugged on my rope for slack. "What about us?"

"You were...oh, how do you mortals put it nowadays? Ah, yes. _Fooling around _in the cave between the ocean and forest."

"Okay," I started angrily. "First off, we weren't fooling around, and second, how do you even know--"

"A certain goddess of love clues most of Olympus in on such affairs," Artemis gave a hollow laugh, "whether we want to hear it or not."

"Oh."

"I must say, with Athena as your mother, I tend to expect more of you," she fixed her sad silver eyes on me. "I thought you might be wiser. Even without your natural-born wisdom, your common sense as a half-blood could remind you of the consequences of friendships with children of Poseidon. Or more than friendships."

I wrinkled my nose. "Pardon me, Lady Artemis, but that's totally wrong. I don't _like_ like him. It was just a...weird moment, there in the cave."

"Let's hope it was," she shivered. "Or your mother will not hesitate to withdraw her support in battle. As its patron goddess, it is best not to upset her."

She stopped. I kept belaying but paused expectantly, waiting for her to go on. When she didn't, I raised an eyebrow. "That's it? That's all you wanted to say to me?"

"Mm..."

"Well, why didn't you say all that to Percy?" I huffed. "It's his fault, anyway. He kissed _me_, not the other way around!"

Artemis' rope quivered, and she took a shaky breath. "Annabeth," she said, looking away. "You're right, I suppose. It's not just that. Most affairs with men are silly and vapid anyway," she acknowledged, more pulled-together. "But things are different with sons of the sea god. I would know, if you remember."

My face twisted in confusion. Then my eyes widened as it came to me. "Ephialtes and...that other guy!"

"Otus," she finished sadly. "Otus and Ephialtes. Giant men, and favorites of Mother Earth, Gaea. When she whispered to them at night -- that is, she told them they should rule Mount Olympus -- they loved the idea."

"They built a tower almost as big as Olympus, right?" I added, trying to impress her with my knowledge of architecture.

"_As _big as Olympus," she corrected me. So much for being impressive. "And then, they locked Ares in a bronze jar and demanded we surrender. And you know what happens after that, I suppose?" She turned back to me.

"Uh...no," I shrugged apologetically. "That's all of the story I know. What happened?"

"They demanded me, and Hera, as their wives," she whispered, trembling with anger as if this had been yesterday. "I and Otus, Hera and Ephialtes. Hera was much too proud to do so, but I pretended to accept their proposal and traveled to their tower. They began arguing so much over me that I had time to transform into a doe, jump between them, and make each of them shoot arrows at the other trying to hunt me."

I blinked. It was so hard to imagine this, this _twelve_ year old -- about to be married? "Wow," I finally said.

"It was the only way they could die," she muttered to herself. "The only way. Neither god nor man could kill them..."

I belayed down some more, uncomfortable. "So, not to be a jerk, but what should I have taken from that story?"

Artemis jolted back into reality. "Never trust sons of the sea," she instructed solemnly. "Of course, this one is better than most; if I had to pick a man to depend on, he would not be a terrible choice. However, that does not change facts. Under no circumstances should you get too close to this Percy Jackson."

"I am _not _too close to--"

"WATCH OUT!"

I looked down quickly after Thalia's distant voice rang into my ears. Instead of open air, rocky dirt stared back at me.

Yelping and seizing a jutting rock above me -- I scraped my hands, but who cared -- I gripped it tightly, desperately trying to keep from from bouncing off the cliff and onto the rocky floor of the abyss before I was ready. "Oops," I gasped once the shock was over. "Almost died there,"

"Nice going," Thalia laughed as she unclipped her rope from her jean-shorts, hopped to the ground, and leapt towards us with Percy in tow. "Next time, watch where you're belaying, okay?"

"Seriously," I agreed, gingerly unhooking my own rope from my waist and staring at Percy. His face and arms were nearly glowing with red marks and scrapes. "What happened to _you?_"

"Don't like rock-climbing," he mumbled, wincing as Thalia swatted his shoulder playfully. I glared at her.

"What?" she said incredulously.

"Nothing," I turned away and followed Artemis around the bend in the canyon.

But I knew exactly what. There was no way Thalia was going to be playfully swatting _any_ part of Percy. No, no no, no! It was wrong and it probably hurt with all those cuts and...wait. No, I didn't care, remember? I wasn't _jealous_ or anything.

It's not like that one kiss-coincidence meant we were "together".

Artemis stopped in front of me and fumbled in her leather pouch for something. "Aha," she murmured, bringing out a teaspoon or so of glittering blue-silver powder. "Your friend is close by," she told Percy and me. "But he'll need a good lumping of this before he can walk again."

"Do satyrs walk, or trot?" Percy asked.

She rolled her eyes. "It would please me if you shut up, half-blood."

We took another careful step...then two...then three...then, on the fourth step, Artemis' head swiveled around to a black mound in the distance. "There he is," she pointed out calmly.

"GROVER!" the other three of us screeched, pushing each other out of the way to get to him faster. His limp body came into focus as we grew nearer. And as we grew nearer, I felt the same sinking feeling in my heart that I had when the Sphinx grinned. His shaggy fur was matted with blood from the fall, his face as scratched as Percy's, and his horns, indeed, crumpled.

"Oh, Grover," I whispered sadly.

"He is not beyond help," Artemis strolled toward us, relaxed as ever. "I will allow the use of my Lunar Dust for him..." she gave us a cautionary look. "But just this once. Try to be more careful."

I didn't even retort to her scolding. She knelt down by his lifeless body, closing her eyes and sprinkling the dust over him in a shimmer. "_Therapevo,_" she said clearly and loudly in Ancient Greek.

At first, nothing happened.

But a few seconds later, Grover's eyelids fluttered, the color pouring itself back into his face. "Mmhbbbmhmff?" he mumbled, half-asleep.

"Grover!" Percy, Thalia, and I squealed. "You're okay!"

"Hey!" the satyr said sleepily but excitedly. "It's great to see you guys, _finally_! What'd I miss? Thalia? What are you doing he--" Grover seemed to be struck by a thought and enthusiastically whirled around to face the goddess who'd saved him. "_Lady Artemis!_ Oh, thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthank--"

"You're welcome," she grinned at his kneeling.

"_Thank_ you! Oh, Lady Artemis! I have to tell you!" he stuttered, stumbling to his feet. "I finally found it! I saw...I saw the...um...the...the...uh, I saw..."

"What, Grover?" Percy prodded him.

He snapped his fingers and shot up ten feet in the air from excitement. "The entrance," he breathed, exhilerated. "I saw the entrance to the Labyrinths."


	4. The Amaizeing Maze

_A/N: Yippee, these Author's Notes are FUN stuff! Again, I can't thank you guys enough for the sweet sweet reviews. :) Except Honest101, who wasn't so sweet, but I thank him/her for speaking his/her mind. Don't go away just yet because of the relative lack of fluff for the last chapter or so. It's coming. Oh, and read this whole chapter before you kill me...you might change your mind :D_

We sprinted behind Grover, wind whistling past us, through the twisting cliff floor. The gleaming orange-red of the rocks glinted in the sunlight as he screeched to a halt in front of us. "There," he gasped, out of breath from the run. "That's the entrance."

"Uh, Grover?" I said uncertainly. All that lied in front of us was the plain rocks, same as everywhere. "How do you know this is it?"

"Trust me," he trotted over to a large boulder and pointed. "See that?"

I peered at the hunk of rock. Engraved deep into the red stone, two bull's horns arched gracefully. I traced my finger over one and nodded, my heart picking up pace. "The Minoan bull," I said.

Percy sighed loudly. "Do I even have to ask this time?"

"The bull was the symbol of the Minoans," I told him, distracted. "The ancient Labyrinth was under the Palace of Knossos, one of the main Minoan cities."

"Enough with the history lesson!" Grover whined. "Don't you guys want to go in?"

We looked at each other. In one sentence, Grover had pretty much summed up my struggle for the whole month.

Percy was the only one who needed to find Kronos' tomb in the labyrinth. Only Percy. For heaven's sake, _I_, a normal half-blood, would not be helping matters much by following him inside. Percy alone had the power to destroy the tomb, and, frankly, even I thought that my being there would complicate things.

But I still felt that I needed to go in.

"Yeah," I answered finally. "So how do we open the, um, door?"

"It's not a _door_," Grover said. "It's an _entryway_,"

"Whatever. How do you get inside?"

Grover looked sheepishly at Artemis. "I was sort of hoping you could help," he admitted.

Artemis gave the wall of rock in front of us a quick once-over, then shrugged and skipped forward. Dipping her finger in the same powder she used to heal Grover, she traced the bull's silhouette just as I had done. Immediately, a deep grumbling noise echoed from within the rock.

"It's working!" Grover nearly squeaked. "Lady Artemis..!"

Even as he spoke, great chunks of stone shifted this way and that, revealing the mouth to a black entrance. As the entrance got bigger, the light from outside barely lit a dim, dank passageway.

"Wow," Percy gulped, squinting inside. "That's really nice of you."

"That's okay," she said dismissively. "I do this sort of thing often. But, I'm afraid, I have spent enough time here. I must be returning to the rest of the Hunters."

Grover's shoulders slumped. Okay, so did mine and Percy's.

"But..." I poked Thalia. "What about her?"

Artemis looked meaningfully at Thalia. Without tearing her gaze away, she said, "Thalia is my second-in-command. I give her full permission to choose whether or not to participate in the upcoming labyrinths."

Thalia squirmed. "So, that means I have to decide _now_?"

Artemis squelched a smile. "No, of course not," she glanced at her wrist...as if a goddess had a watch. "You have all of fifteen seconds to choose."

Percy stared her down. I stared her down. Grover was busy swiping a tasty metal barrette out of Thalia's backpack, so he didn't stare, but all the rest of us held our breath.

"Guys," she looked at us with a pained expression. "Don't take this the wrong way. I just, I don't know..." she fidgeted with Aegis. "I sort of need to stick with Artemis for this one."

Percy exhaled loudly. I looked at the Minoan bull boulder with utterly fake fascination, and even Grover quit chomping on the barrette this time to sadly shuffle away from Thalia. "But..." he said softly. "We'll _need_ you in there."

"You'll be fine," Thalia said, a strained tone to her voice. "Like I said, you don't need me to babysit you."

"Thalia!"

"Sorry, but you know what I mean. It's no big deal," she pulled out her bow, ready to turn it back into a grappling hook. "I'll see you when you come out."

With that, she spun on her heel. She and Artemis darted away into the now-setting sun, leaving Percy, Grover, and me to face the maze alone.

--

"Okay," I started, stepping gingerly toward the entrance. "Who's got a plan?"

Percy looked inside decisively. "How about, 'just walk in there, armed'?"

"Per-_cy_."

"What, you've got a better idea?"

"Well, I was thinking about mapping this out a little," I rolled my eyes. "But, no, I guess that's the best plan we've got. C'mon."

Grover whimpered and Percy nudged him. "Grover, get a grip!"

"B-but...somebody needs to stand guard!"

I gave him a pleading look. "Grover. Please."

He dug his feet into the sandy ground. "I'm serious," he insisted. "I'll guard the entrance and you two can go in."

Percy looked at me for an answer. "Fine, all right," he said after I nodded. "But don't fall asleep or anything, 'kay?"

Grover saluted. "Aye-aye!"

Percy smiled and gave his friend a big man-hug, the kind with claps on the back. "Cross your fingers for me, buddy," he told him.

With a wobbly smile, Grover sent us off, his furry figure growing smaller and smaller as Percy and I crept into the dank, wet tunnel. I wrenched my head away from the window of light where Grover stood, looked at the tunnel wall, and grabbed one of the wooden torches flickering in the sconce holder.

"Go ahead," I tapped Percy and gestured to the other torch. "We'll need the light later."

He lifted the torch from the wall and continued walking briskly. "Thalia's really changed, huh?" he began suddenly as he walked. "Or was she always like that when you knew her?"

"No," I shook my head. Didn't know if he could see me in the dim light. "It's like I've lost a friend."

"Yeah," Percy said hollowly.

"It'll be harder in here without her," I dodged -- eek! -- a spiderweb. "I wish she'd think of someone other than herself."

"_I_ wish she hadn't been spying on us," Percy snorted.

"She was spying?!"

"Duh. How else could she have known what riddle the Sphinx gave us?"

"Well, that's annoying," I brought my torch down so I could see Percy's face. "Do you think she...um...was spying for a while?"

Percy's eyes drifted away from me. "You mean, was she watching back before, in the cave and stuff?"

Whatever thoughts were coursing through that pea-sized brain of his didn't show on his face. It was unreadable. Like a whiteboard someone had just wiped off, or a cloudy crystal ball. And looking at his face like that, the weirdest thoughts began popping upin _my_ mind. Did I look pretty? Was _he_ thinking about me? Did I like Percy, maybe, even a little bit? If I did, what about Luke, who'd been there for me since forever and who obviously loved me already? And, most pressing of all...

"Percy," I walked a little slower but didn't look at him. "Why'd you kiss me?"

Absolute bloody silence.

His voice went all strange when he finally said, "I didn't...well, I mean, you were...I don't know!"

"You said you didn't like me," I bit my lip. "You said you were in a coma when you thought I was pretty, so what gives?"

"Come on, Annabeth!" he said. "I like you as a friend, okay! You know that. You're one of my best friends. Can we keep it that way?"

_Then why'd you kiss me?!_ I wanted to shout at him again. But I didn't. I just nodded quickly and told him, "Yeah, yeah, of course. Let's just forget it ever happened, right?"

"Yeah. Friends?"

"Sure," I should've been happy he hadn't meant it that way, but for some stupid reason my throat grew tight when I said, "We'll always be friends."

We walked in silence for a while, our hands bumping together in the dark every couple of seconds. It was nothing more than annoying at first, but a couple minutes down the tunnel, his hand and mine tangled together accidently.

"Sorry," we both said quickly, yanking our hands to our sides.

The tunnel dipped and raised, like the track of some long-forgotten roller coaster. In fact, my mind was too scrambled from the hand-brushing incident to realize the stony walls were widening until the tunnel suddenly stopped and opened into a huge, football-field sized, super-high-ceilinged cave.

"Woah."

"Woah is right," agreed Percy. "The Labyrinth is freakin' _corn_?"

It was true. Towering above our heads, yellow kernels gleaming in the flickering torchlight, the giant stalks of corn formed the walls for a twisting, complicated maze. The Labyrinth itself.

"Whoever chose the building materials wasn't very smart," I said, walking toward a particularly tall row of corn. "I mean, you can walk straight through them."

"Annabeth, I wouldn't..."

_SPRINGGGGG._ As soon as my hands parted the cornstalks, an incredibly springy push of corncob bounced me back onto the cold, wet cave floor. Specifically, it pushed me into a puddle.

"Oh, _gross_," I whined, standing up and turning to see the soaked seat of my shorts. "It looks like I went swimming!"

"Or worse," Percy snickered, picking my Yankees cap up from the puddle and shaking it dry. "Here," he offered it to me. "You don't want to forget that."

"Thanks," I said, stuffing it in my pocket. "So I guess that means we have to actually go through the maze, huh?"

"Guess so. Look, there's the entrance," he pointed to an open corn archway. "Nothing too fancy here, but that's how I like it." He started down the yellow-lined Labyrinth, pausing to shoot me a look when I giggled. "What?"

"Nothing, nothing," I muffled another laugh and ran under the corn archway. "Just, a-_corn_-ing to Chiron, the Labyrinth was supposed to be a little more epic than this."

Percy smiled slyly. "Yeah, but he's more of a _Kernel_ Sanders than a vegetable expert."

"Percy," I warned. "You're getting pretty _corny_."

"You're right," he wiped the grin from his face. "This is serious business, and we're going to act serious." We went all of fifteen seconds before he muttered grimly under his breath, "Follow the _yellow_ brick road."

We erupted into snickers and had to stop for breath before going on. Telling corny jokes to pass the time, it wasn't difficult to get through the maze at all. We never once ran into a dead end, but it must have been a half hour before we arrived at the last twisting passage to our trophy. Kronos' tomb.

"The tomb," Percy murmured, a sudden change from his idea about having Thanksgiving here (because of the _corn_ucopia).

"Yes," I looked at him solemnly. The white marble sarcophagus glowed faintly, pulsing with energy. "You ready?" I asked.

"I'll never be ready," he said simply. He took a deep breath and uncapped Anasklumos, its gleaming metal surface like a shining beacon through the dark. "Wish me luck. I'll need it."

I squeezed his hand. Who cared now? "Well, then, good luck."

He smiled half-heartedly and took a step toward the coffin. One more step. Then another. With a heart-stopping breath, he slid the metal edge of his sword under the sarcophagus' lid, pausing for a a moment. He quickly jerked the lid open and leapt back as a girly, blood-curdling shriek echoed from inside the tomb and dissolved into loud, high-pitched laughter. I shrieked too, and pretty much clawed my fingers into Percy's shoulders as I jumped in the air behind him.

"Stupid half-bloods!" the voice sniggered as its owner slithered out of the tomb.

It wasn't Kronos. It was a naiad.

"You obviously haven't figured it out by now," the water nymph snickered, "But this isn't the real Labyrinth. Get in and follow me."


	5. Platform 9 and, Wait, Wrong Story

_**A/N: This chapter's a little slow. SORRY!! I NEEDED TO MAKE IT SLOW!! You'll see, next chapter's going to explode and you'll be happy this one was quiet :) Thanks for reviewing, as always, y'all are the ones who make me write!!**_

"'This isn't the real Labyrinth'?!" Percy repeated, dumbstruck. "What do you _mean_, this isn't the real Labyrinth?"

The naiad smirked. "Stupid. You thought the most complicated maze in the universe would be made of _corn_? Stupid!"

"Of course not," I lied confidently as I remembered something. "You think we could be fooled that easy?Especially with the sarcophagus. It's supposed to be golden, not white marble."

Percy looked at me with _ohhhh_ written all over his face.

"Well, whatever," the brunette flipped her sun-streaked hair and pushed the marble lid all the way off the tomb. "Are you going to come with me or not?"

Percy stared at her in disgust. "No!"

"Wait," I looked meaningfully at the nymph. "If this isn't the real maze, then where_ is_ the real one?"

"Duh! That's what I'd tell you if you'd follow me!"

"Huh," I turned to Percy. "Percy, you know water. Look at her," I motioned to the naiad. "Is she telling the truth?"

He was about to open his mouth in protest, but then he looked at the watery girl. His eyes misted over for a moment, then he shook his head quickly and turned back to me. "Yeah, actually. I'm pretty sure she is."

She snarled, "Of course I'm telling the truth! Stupid jerks!"

"Annabeth," Percy muttered. "How else are we going to find the Labyrinth?"

"I know!" I muttered back. "But why would someone set up a fake maze for us to go through?"

"We'll find out later, then. Let's follow her. At least it'll get us somewhere."

The naiad tossed her hair again and coughed loudly. "A_hem_."

"Well..." I pointed to the marble coffin. "All right. Let's go find the real Labyrinth."

"Finally!" the water nymph sniffed. "Stupid. Get in the sarcophagus, we're going for a ride."

Percy and I exchanged a look as we grabbed onto the side of the coffin and hoisted ourselves in. Ick. This was creepy. Like getting buried alive.

"_Pevtomai_!" the naiad cried, clapping her hands in midair. Before I could ask for her to wait until we sat down, a great pull jerked me forward and my head began spinning. All around me, the dark cave twisted and turned until the whole thing became a damp, messy blur. With a _fwoosh_, our coffin sailed through the cave ceiling -- don't ask me how we didn't get hurt -- and sent the rock flying in all directions. Clear, bright light nearly blinded me as we rushed up.

"Wh-wh-where are we going?!" I demanded of our driver.

"Be patient, stupid!" the nymph snapped, not even looking at me. "We'll get there soon enough!"

I tried to keep still and wait for us to turn in another direction now that we were above ground, but we didn't turn. The tomb just kept zooming up, cold air chilling our ears. I peered over the edge at the now-shrinking cliff and tugged Percy's shirt. "Look," I said with a twinge of disappointment. "Grover left."

Percy turned around to look over the edge. "Where'd he go?"

"I don't know," I propped my chin in my hand. "Maybe he's stalking the Hunters."

We held back snickers so our naiad wouldn't say "stupid" again.

The sarcophagus was rising higher now, clouds thwacking against the shining marble of the tomb. The air was getting thinner, harder to breathe. "Um, excuse me," I gasped, poking the naiad cautiously. "But we kind of need oxygen once in a while!"

She snorted. "Stupid sissies. If you want air," she extended a wet arm out the tomb, which was gently slowing, screeching to a halt. "Then _get out_."

I took a glance at our final destination and did a double-take. "What--" I blinked at the sight. "I mean, where are we?!"

The naiad clucked her tongue. "You're close enough to the Labyrinth," she floated out of the sarcophagus and glared at us. "Oh, get out of there already, you're not going to die."

Maybe. But I had no idea _where_ we possibly could've been.

The tomb had come to rest beside a crystal platform...as big as a medium-sized school campus, and with about as many people. Glass pavillions and homes rose from the clear floor, columns draped with sweet-smelling white jasmine and honeysuckle. Great beams of quartz rose, dancing with colorful light inside, from the edges of the platform. I couldn't see what was beyond the pavilions and glass houses, but it definitely looked happy and busy. Like a floating, crystal country club.

Chatting and laughing, the people there (gods? goddesses?) glowed with power.

The side of the tomb flipped open like a roller coaster car. Percy hopped over the threshold. "You may now exit the vehicle," he mimicked under his breath. "Please wait until the cars have come to a complete stop..."

I stifled a snigger and followed him onto the glass floor. "It's beautiful here," I looked left and right. "But, uh, we're kind of looking for the Labyrinth."

"You won't see it," the nymph told us as she began walking toward the pavilions, snaking past quartz beams. "They haven't risen it yet. Follow me, already, stupids!"

We quickly got to our feet and jogged behind her until we reached the closest pavilion, its surface glistening like dew. She pulled me and Percy through the columns, pushing us toward ten ten-foot embodiments of the most oblivious gods I had ever seen.

Demeter sat on a glass bench with her daughter, Persephone, laughing as they twirled their fingers around a ten-foot flower that kept growing.

Aphrodite was giggling next to Ares, swishing her lavender dress around like a total flirt (I could see Percy drooling beside me), and Apollo was trying to push Ares into making up some new Ruba'i type of poem.

Hermes was chattering away on a cell phone with two snakes nipping at his wrist. Zeus and Hera bickered good-naturedly in the middle of all this, Zeus toying with his Master Bolt, Hera's favorite peacock tossing its feathers on her shoulder.

Hades wasn't there of course, but Poseidon -- _Percy's father_ -- was. In fact, in all his Hawaiian-shirted glory, he stood beside someone else. Athena. _My mother_.

And they were obviously not pleased with each other.

"I got them," the naiad said plainly amidst all the chatter, stomping up to Lord Zeus. "Pay, please."

Zeus looked away from Hera, confused. "What? Oh, you," he looked at the nymph distastefully and handed her two golden drachmas. "Fine, fine."

"The heroes are here?" Hera asked loudly, staring at us with peacock intensity.

The whole pavilion hushed. Even Aphrodite quit giggling to look at Percy like he was some sugary cupcake or something.

"Uh, hi," Percy shuffled his feet. "We didn't mean to barge in, we were looking for..."

"The Labyrinth," Hera finished. "Yes, well, you will have to wait, young half-blood."

Aphrodite bit her perfectly shaped lip, probably to keep giggles from spilling out. "Ooh, ask me why, Percy!" she whispered.

Knowing Percy, I cut in before he could ask her. "Sorry," I began quickly. "But we really need to know what's going on."

Hera sat down on another crystal bench to explain. "You see," she motioned for us to sit down on the benches behind _us_. "With the real Labyrinth, it has evolved over millenia. You cannot simply walk into the maze...too many mortal lives would perish, what with the growth of cities nowadays," she looked under her feet at the clouds and, I guess, cities miles below. "A rather secret door -- that is, the fake Labyrinth -- was the only way on the Earth to get to the Grecian Platform you are on now. We are not quite as high as Mount Olympus, as you can see."

Percy nudged me and pointed to a dot in the sky. "Woah," I looked at the glowing dot. "That's the home of the gods?"

"Guess so," Percy said, but he must've caught Hera's impatient stare. "Sorry, uh, Lady Hera."

"In _any_ case," she continued. "Mortals, or half-bloods, cannot make the trip from Mount Olympus to the Platform. Gods alone are welcome to, but otherwise nobody can walk here unless they came from the other maze. So," she looked pained and avoided Aphrodite's excited gaze. "As the Labyrinth can only be summoned on the Spring Equinox -- which is tomorrow, as you know -- these pavilions fill the Platform until then. Mainly they set the scene for the Spring Festival Ball on March 19th every year."

"What?!" I yelped.

"Spring. Festival. Ball," Percy looked horrified. "We don't have to--"

"Oh, _yes!_" Aphrodite sang, finally unable to contain herself. "You most certainly _do _have to attend, Percy! And Annabeth," she shot me a sweet smile. "You do too, of course."

"Sorry, no can do," I waved my hands in front of me. "We don't have any, um, ballroom attire, right Percy?"

"Yeah," he agreed. "All we have's what we're wearing!"

Aphrodite grinned evilly. "I know. It won't be a problem, because I prepared for it," she waltzed to our side of the pavilion, grabbed each of us in one goddess-sized, glowing hand, and yanked us outside the pavilion. "Toodles, everyone!" she yelled over her shoulder. "These two'll be back in time for the Festival Ball!"

I caught only a glimpse of Poseidon, looking amused, Hera, looking irritated, and my mother Athena, looking utterly bewildered by the time Aphrodite had sank her claws into my shoulder.

"All right, here's the plan," she told each of us. I begged Percy with my eyes, but he just shook his head wildly and mouthed, _Get me out of here!_ Of course, he looked a little less willing to go when she gave one of her signature winning smiles.

"Percy. You," Aphrodite pushed him off to a tall, goatee-wearing man in European designer clothes. "Go with Roberto. And Annabeth," she took me by the hand, dancing off in the opposite direction toward a crystal villa decorated with floating hearts and bubbles. "You're coming with _me_. Isn't that exciting?"

_Nooooooooooooo!_

"Um, sure," I squeaked, being jerked inside through the villa's glittering pink door-curtain. "What are we doing, exactly?"

Aphrodite pushed me onto a fluffy red couch and threw open the two largest closet doors I'd ever seen. "A makeover, silly," she said, distracted. "Hmm. I _do _think that my things may be a bit big for you in this form..." she snapped her left fingers and they shrank to human-sized clothes. "There! Much better."

She stepped back from the rack of dresses to let me see them all. "Take your pick, sweetie."

I gaped at them. Every one was beautiful, most were glittering, and some seemed to have every color of the rainbow in them. "I...I don't know," I said. "I don't think I'm even going to this ball."

"Don't be ridiculous," she scoffed, tossing a couple of dresses onto the bed. "Of course you are."

"I don't _have _to..."

"Yes, you do," she insisted. "Now, choose."

"Can you do it for me, then?" I said stubbornly. "You're the beauty expert."

"Oh...fine!" she hesitated for all of half a second. "You'll look gorgeous in...this, and this, and this, and...this!" she pushed four dresses on me and pointed to a little velvety closet next to the huge mirror. "See, I even have a dressing room. _Vite, vite_!"

I scurried over to the dressing room, dresses in hand, wondering how I possibly was going through with Aphrodite's hair-brained schemes. _Whatever,_ I thought as I slipped on the first dress. Ew. Scratchy. It was made of an asparagus-colored taffeta with some kind of weird sash, and it had tulle underneath it. Yup, the stuff ballerinas wear.

I pushed my way out of the door to see how it looked. "Oh, yuck!" I cried, undoing the sash quickly and hiding behind the dressing room door. "You have all these pretty dresses and you had to pick _this_ one?"

"Well," Aphrodite guided me out from behind the door and looked closely at the mirror image. "I have to admit the color isn't really good with your skin's undertones. Try on the next one."

I did and came out to show her. "Uh...better?"

She gave the slinky pink and black ensemble a once-over. "Better. But not astounding. Try on the next one, the mermaid dress."

"Mermaid dress"? I'd never _heard_ of a mermaid dress. But by the time I'd pulled the ultra-tight gray costume on, I had a good idea.

"Oh, darling," she shook her head. "Next. Please."

Last one, I hoped. Out I came in the shortish yellow, puffy getup.

"I look like Tinkerbell!" I whined, tugging at the fabric.

"Fine, so none of my choices worked," Aphrodite sniffed. "Then pick your _own_, if you know so much!"

I held my chin up and marched over to the closet. _Fine,_ I thought. _I could pick better dresses than those, anyway_.

I scanned the endless rack of prom-worthy stuff, with no idea what kind of thing I was looking for. "Well..._this _one looks kind of pretty," I took down a glittering dress, midnight-blue.

"Try it on," she urged.

I went back to the dressing room, holding the dress up so I could get a better look at it. It really was pretty. I zipped the back zipper and walked outside.

"Oh, Annabeth!" Aphrodite squealed. "That's the one, it has to be!"

"You think?" I said nervously. Strapless, it had a sweetheart neckline and a top with draping fabric at the waist. An old-fashioned full ballgown skirt fell in cascades to the floor, blue as night with Swarvoski crystals sparkling through the silk like stars. "I like it, maybe," I whispered.

She beamed and slipped a pair of silver heels on my feet, not that you could see them under the dress. "That's it. To hair and makeup!" she cried like a general preparing for battle.

I was whisked into a huge marble-lined bathroom, every cosmetic product imaginable lining the counter. I didn't much pay attention to what she was doing to my face, because she began yapping about romance the second we sat down.

"You know," she said after a while, dabbing some smoky eyeshadow stuff on my lids. "Percy came all across the U.S. just for you?"

I laughed. "No he didn't, he came to save Artemis,"

"That's just what the prophecy said," Aphrodite warned, capping the mascara. "You can't always believe that Delphi girl on matters of the heart. Lip gloss -- pink or natural?"

"What the heck is _natural_?" I asked, wrinkling my nose.

"Buff."

"Huh?"

"Skin-colored, okay?"

"Well, natural, then. No pink, please."

Aphrodite gently wiped a teensy bit of "natural" on my lips, then continued. "Besides, the Oracle is not the only one who has the gift of prophecy."

"You're going to tell me you do."

"I _do_," she smiled, turning me around and combing my hair. "Only on romantic prospects, but still."

My heart raced. "You didn't see me and Percy together, did you?"

She just smiled and clamped a hair straightener on me.

"_Did_ you?"

"That's purely confidential."

"Tell me, _please_, Lady Aphrodite!"

"I can't, silly girl," she giggled, putting down the straightener and picking up a monster curling iron. "Your hair's straight enough now to hold a large curl."

"Don't move away from the subject!" I pleaded. "What did you see?"

"I saw that your curly hair before was too loosely curled and frizzed to wear by itself. You straighten it first, then curl it for smooth, shiny..."

"It doesn't matter what you saw, anyway," I relaxed a little. "Me and Percy were never 'together', and some prophetic vision won't change anything."

Aphrodite unclamped the barrel and ran her fingers through the curls. "There, you're done."

"Thank you, Lady Aphrodite," I said as sweetly as I could manage.

"But just so you know -- I saw you two in the cave that day."

"Will no one _keep quiet_ about that!" I cried.

She waved me away. "The ball awaits," she told me, opening the villa's curtain to the now-twilight sky. "Have fun!"

I stumbled out of the villa, too made up to believe, and looked around. We seemed to be on the outskirts of the Platform, and the Ball was just beginning in the huge, open square in the middle. Glowing gods and godesses had just begun dancing to some Top 5 hit.

I cautiously walked around a glass house in front of me, to be greeted by a smiling Hermes. Apparently the greeter, he was decked out in a tux but still fiddling with his cell phone. "Annabeth Chase! Don't you look lovely!"

"Thanks," I blushed, fidgeting behind my back. "Where's..."

"_Annabeth?"_

I turned around slowly, not knowing what to expect or what to say.

Percy stood there, jaw dropping to the floor. "Aw, man, that _is _you!"


	6. Steel Magnolias, Except Not Really

_**A/N: Gosh. This is where the story sort of lives up to its name for once. Absolutely **__**no**__** substance whatsoever for the first half, but that's how we like it, right? :D By the way...the song they're hearing is "So Close" by Jon McLaughlin: www . youtube . com /watch?vFH8WAoRL1xo . Listen if you're like me and have to imagine everything you read like it's a movie.**_

_**P.S. Did you know that the next book really DOES have a Sphinx? GRARRRR!! I THOUGHT OF IT FIRST!! Not actually, he probably wrote it first, but cool coincidence there :) Oh, and PLUS: New pic of all the characters! I can't draw worth a flip, but look here anyway: i25.tinypic . com/einrs6.jpg . Just take away those annoying spaces :D  
**_

"W-well..." I stuttered, backing up from him. "Of course it's me! Who'd you expect?"

But he wasn't the only one whose jaw had dislocated. Mine had, too. As much as I hated to admit it, as much as I told myself it wasn't true, Percy didn't look bad, either. While he obviously didn't have to undergo the terrible makeup-and-dress nightmare I had, he'd been...changed a little. His hair, usually messy and with dirt in it or something, shone crisp and black without any of that stupid gel stuff guys usually try to put in their hair. His face had no acne; not that usually he needed ProActiv or anything, but now, I mean, it was flawless. His green eyes glowed, I swear. Worst of all, he was wearing a _tuxedo._

Yes! That same Percy! In a tux!

"You look different, yourself," is how I finally summed my thoughts up.

I didn't have to worry about what to say next, because he didn't say anything. His eyes just kind of widened as he left his mouth wide open.

"Quit doing that, you look like a fish," I said uncomfortably. "Seaweed Brain..."

Hermes seemed to have noticed our slight surprise, because he quickly and conveniently got a call from his cell phone. "Oh, wow, would you look at that! At seven o' clock, he's got the nerve to call _me_? Gosh, I better get going." He waved to us and sped away, his snakes rolling their tiny eyes.

Percy shook his head and got a grip. "Anyway, you look, uh, good," he said. I could have sworn I saw him wipe drool away when he thought I wasn't looking...

But that was probably left over from his seeing Aphrodite.

"Thanks. You too," I said awkwardly. "So, I just came to this ball thing a couple minutes ago, but I guess we should get going..."

"Oh, yeah, definitely," he looked at the ground and hurried in next to me. "It's been pretty hard dealing with this Labyrinth thing,"

"I don't like it, either," I agreed as we moseyed around a group of minor teenage gods. "Too complicated for me."

"They said they'd 'raise' the maze tomorrow, but what does _that _mean?"

I shrugged as we came to rest underneath a super-tall, sweeping magnolia tree, which, like the jasmine on the columns, was actually not glass. Funny, magnolias were usually short and squat. "Who knows? There isn't much room for a huge maze in this little square."

Percy's eyes glinted. "Maybe they'll shrink us."

I laughed. Unfortunately, Aphrodite herself caught my eye behind Percy at that moment. Even more shimmery and dressed-up than usual, she silently squealed and gave me two thumbs up.

I tried to ignore her and went back to talking. "You know why the gods can't go in there themselves, right?"

"Yeah," he rolled his eyes. "Because _gods can't meddle _in other's affairs,"

Stupid as it was, I burst out laughing. "When you said that..." I tried to explain. "I mean...gods meddle in each other's 'affairs' a _lot_, Percy! Look at Zeus and his billion kids!"

"You know what I mean," he laughed. "Affairs, business, whatever."

My giggles faded off when I said, "You've basically got it down, though. I just can't believe I'm a pawn in their stupid game...again."

He looked at me, real serious. "I know. But you've gotta admit, the game's a pretty big deal. Bigger than one or two people."

I fiddled with my dress and looked him back in the eye. "You're too noble, Jellyfish," I told him. "I'm no Siren, but that's got to be your fatal flaw. Being noble."

"You are--"

"Drink?"

Annoyed, I turned to the minor god, a Dionysus-wannabe, and looked hesitantly at the bubbling champagne glasses.

"Oh, don't worry, there's no alcohol," he grinned widely. "It's just nectar. I'm sure you can handle it."

We smiled politely and took some drinks. I only got to take one sweet, sweet sip of mine -- warm and refreshing and tasting a bit like mulled Christmas cider -- before the DJ pressed a button. The upbeat dance song faded away as he spoke into the microphone.

"I'm gonna slow it down a little for y'all now," his voice echoed throughout the Platform. "Guys, pick a girl. This dance ain't optional!"

My heart, which had been racing only twenty minutes ago, froze mid-beat. No. Way.

But it was too late, I realized. That _oh-no-not-now_ feeling that always accompanies the start of slow music at a dance washed over me. Light piano notes floated from the speakers.

I looked away, pretending to be fascinated with the magnolia tree. Nononononono, I could not possibly slow-dance with him after our Cave Incident!

But a tanned, blond teenager clad in a white tux and wings fluttered over to us. "Annabeth, is it? And Percy?"

I looked at him strangely. Why did he look so familiar? "Yeah..."

He pointed to Percy and stared him down. "Don't even _think_ about it. I know full well you had to take those Dance Club lessons once a month this year."

Percy looked horrified again. "How did you know?!"

The guy ignored him and pointed to me. "You did too, right?"

"Um..." I was all set to ask him what the heck Dance Club was, but the problem? I actually _had_ done Dance Club 2012 -- a seriously messed up program run by the mother's groups in our neighborhood. Everybody in our grade had to go learn ballroom dancing for an hour and hip-hop for fifteen minutes. It was torture, I promise you. "Kind of, yes."

He smiled smugly. "Well, get on with it, then!" He fluttered away, gone as quickly as he'd come.

Percy reddened, but stayed mostly cool. "Huh, weird guy," he muttered before turning to me. "Um, Annabeth?"

I blinked and blushed. "Yes?"

"I guess, well...you wanna dance?"

I blushed even more. No, I did not want to dance. I wanted to die. My face must've resembled a very ripe strawberry. "Uh, yeah, sure," I shook my head to get the curls out of my face. "Okay."

The male singer's voice drifted through the darkening night just as his right hand took mine. Gah-_lee_, I wished I paid more attention in Dance Club! I _thought_ I was supposed to put my left hand on his shoulder...yep, that was it. He put his left hand on my waist (which, funny, but I didn't yelp at like I should have) and we began to waltz.

Yes. That's right, waltz.

We weren't half bad, either. Step, step, step, right in time with the music's melody, step, step, and then our left hands let go so I could unfold to the left and twist back into his arms and stay there. I held my breath until the sparkling notes of a key change in the song.

Then more step step, except every few steps I'd get to let go with one hand and spin underneath _his_ hand. As much as I resented my face for doing it, a smile involuntarily crept onto my face. It must have been the song, that beat we were dancing to. More step, step.

Step, step, spin, spin, step, step, spin, spin, fast and breathless and happy.

The song picked up, getting louder, brighter, and we spun more and more until a beam of light -- a spotlight -- turned on us.

I was astonished enough at that, but I was grinning like an idiot when I heard a huge ooh-look-at-them call begin from the rest of the guests. "_Woooooooooooooooooo!_" they cried, growing louder.

As it turned out, half the couples had stopped dancing to look at us and cheer us on.

Percy was grinning too, and before I could spin again he took my waist in both hands and lifted me up and down...while still turning in a circle. I quit trying to hide my smile and laughed, though nobody could hear over the soaring music in the air. We unfolded and our hands left for a split second while I spun once, solo, then folded back again while the song grew softer, slower. We went back to a slow waltz, and something weird happened. On complete accident, as we gradually danced a little closer than usual, our foreheads touched.

It didn't seem weird then, though. Just like it went with the song. And right then it didn't even matter that I was never ever ever going to kiss him again because of that embarrassing cave moment. I felt safe, not sort-of-safe like at Camp Half Blood or safe-for-a-while like at home, but like everything would work out okay eventually.

The singer softly sung out his last notes, and we broke apart reluctantly. Clapping began like a waterfall from the other guests, but I couldn't clap. Truth be told, I wasn't too eager for the song to end.

All dressed-up and smiling and -- ohmygoodness, why was I thinking this -- even a little cute, my friend stood in front of me, not saying anything.

"Percy--" I began, but a certain grinning sun god cut me off.

"Awesome, guys," Apollo cut in with a whopping pat on the back. "Do you two want to hear a poem I made for you? It's actually a sonnet, but I'm calling it, _Ode to Percabe--"_

"Apollo," Zeus scolded, marching over to him in all his trimmed-beard glory. "Enough poetry! We were just discussing the solar energy situation, and your opinion is obviously needed."

The younger god rolled his eyes and trudged over toa tightly knit circle of Zeus and some of the minor gods. I sighed in relief. "Glad he couldn't say the poem," I admitted. "I would have needed earplugs."

Percy grinned and sat down on the glass under the really really tall magnolia we'd been standing by. "I would've needed more than that. Sit down, don't tell me you're not getting tired in those shoes."

My instep ached in response before I could say anything. Nodding miserably, I plopped onto the glass beside him. My skirts poofed out like a balloon. When it became clear he wasn't going to say anything, I took the plunge.

"You're...a good dancer," I murmured. Hopefully it was quiet enough that Aphrodite wouldn't hear.

Percy looked like he was about to say something serious, but seemed to change his mind and took a deep bow instead. "I have many talents," he told me in a horribly fake British accent.

"Yeah," I raised my eyebrows and snickered. "And having a good English accent isn't one of them."

We laughed, only half-nervous now. Yep, same old Percy, right?

"Give me a chance, Wise Girl," he said sarcastically. "I mean, I can-- wait a sec," he crawled behind me and covered my eyes with his hands, like a second-grade game of Guess Who. "Keep your eyes closed," he told me, moving away.

I covered my eyes with my own hands, even though I was secretly rolling them. "What _are_ you doing?" I asked lightly.

Nothing, just a rustle of leaves. Then a loud _thump_. I felt something in my hair and I squirmed. "Per_cy..._"

"Okay, okay. Open your eyes."

I did and looked around, seeing nothing but him. He smiled and pointed to the blonde curls tucked behind my right ear. "See?"

I reached up, felt something smooth and velvety, and took it in my hand.

It was a magnolia. Creamy and pure white.

"How'd you get this?" I whispered, cupping it in both hands.

"I climbed," he said simply. I glanced up at the branches -- the lowest one was nine feet above our heads.

"Really?"

"Yes," he insisted. "Look, foot marks."

True enough, there were little dents in the bark where his shoes had dug in so he could climb up. No matter how Percy would cover this up, climbing trees was not a talent of any demigod. There was simply no god or goddess of tree climbing.

In fact, even if it had been easy to get up there, it was a miracle that he'd found a blossom as perfect as the one I held in my hand; most of the flowers were still tightly locked buds, not a peep of petal opening. I bit my lip to keep from getting all emotional-y. No way was I going to show him how much that meant.

I opened my mouth, ready to say_ it's beautiful_ or at least _thank you_. But what came out as I smiled and slid the magnolia back into my hair was: "Seaweed Brain...that is possibly the most cheesy thing you have ever done for me."

His shoulders slumped and he gave me a fake frown. "Aw, all that and you say it's cheesy?" he fell back onto the glass, playing dead. "You kill me with your indifference."

"Yeah, yeah, suck it up," I laughed, touching my magnolia's petals subconsciously. "You'll get way worse than that if you_ ever _go out with someone."

He grinned and looked like he was about to say something, but didn't. For a moment, a moment that fell into a minute and stretched into several of those, we were perfectly happy with saying nothing and just sitting and looking at the action unfolding before us that night at the Spring Festival Ball.

Apollo singing, Aphrodite flirting, Hermes still texting about one thing or another. Despite what I knew was going to happen tomorrow at the Equinox, everything seemed all right in the world. On these calming thoughts I turned to Zeus. What an intimidating-looking guy. It surprised me that the two messengers talking to him had the guts to...wait. Zeus' eyes widened. What was happening?

I poked Percy. "Hey, you see that?"

"Yeah," he said, staring at Zeus. "What are they talking to him about?"

He boomed some command at the messengers, who trembled, nodded, and sprinted over to the edges of the Platform.

"Um, are they _trying_ to get themselves killed?" I asked, watching the two anxiously do some kind of unlocking with a key. That was strange...there was nothing to unlock. In fact, it looked like they were jamming the key at air.

"They've got a couple problems upstairs," Percy conceded, looking back to Zeus. I wasn't so sure. Keeping my eye close to the messengers, I watched in astonishment as a semi-loud _CLICK _snapped through the air. The messengers leaped back, away from the edge, and suddenly, a stampede of bow-and-arrow-carrying, denim-clad, serious-looking girls materialized in the air and stampeded onto the Platform

An army.

"ANNABETH!"

"OVER HERE!"

"Percy's there too, guys! PERCY!"

"PERCY!"

"PERCY! ANNABETH!"

I quickly shot up from my seat and ran toward the voices. Percy sprinted next to me, as amazed as I was.

"Oh, thank heavens, half-bloods!"

It was Artemis, now ten feet tall and looking very relieved. But that wasn't what surprised me. What _did _surprise me was the girl behind her -- Thalia, who stood confidently in front of hundreds, no, thousands of armed preteen girls. Some of them were even wispy, like they'd just been whisked from the Fields of Asphodel or something...at least that would explain...

"_Bianca_?" I squeaked, coughing. I'd suddenly choked on my own breath. "How--how did you--"

"Don't be stupid," she smiled. Bianca diAngelo. Looking exactly as she had when I last saw her -- except now, of course, gray and translucent. Her eyes glowed, but in a creepy Halloween way. Bianca diAngelo was back. "Hades is as much a god as any of the ones on Olympus. You think he _wants _Kronos to win this war?"

"So he let you live again?!" exclaimed Percy. "That's awesome!"

Her face fell only slightly. "No. Me and a bunch of these other girls got a temporary grant to leave and fight with you. I mean, hey," she turned to Thalia. "At least _we_ can't get killed, right?"

Thalia rolled her eyes. "Sure, sure, make yourself feel better," she looked me up and down. "Nice outfit."

I looked ahead blankly. Thalia. Artemis. Bianca. An army of preteen girls. _Bianca_.

Life was about to get even more complicated.


	7. Soldiers, Take Your Marks

"Ay-yay-yay," I groaned, closing my eyes in despair. "How many more surprises can I take?"

"Don't tell me you're surprised!" Thalia exclaimed. "You really thought I'd just leave you and Percy to die?"

"What was the point of keeping it a secret if you knew you were going to come back for us?" Percy asked her, ticked off. "You could've at least told us!"

Artemis stepped in front of Thalia, explaining, "She didn't know if summoning the army was possible yet."

I shook my head in shock. "I still can't believe this...how did you get this many girls to fight with you?"

Thalia opened her mouth to tell me, but Bianca's loud sigh stopped her.

"As fun as this pow-wow is," she complained. "The Labyrinth is being raised tomorrow, and we have three thousand eight hundred and four soldiers without a place to spend the night."

"Ghosts sleep?" Percy asked, intrigued.

"Yes! Now shut up!"

"I see your point," Artemis acknowledged Bianca. "Let's see what we can do. Excuse me, Aunt H!"

She waved to the sweetly smiling brunette goddess, who was busy tending the flames of the fireplace. With a glance our way, she set down her coal-poker and swished over to us.

"Aunt Hestia is the goddess of the home and hearth," Artemis explained. "I'm sure she can help us find a place for all of the troops." She sent Hestia a look that plainly said, _please_.

Hestia nodded gently. "Of course," she said, waving her hand over the glass where we stood. "You might want to let it rise, now," she told us warningly.

"Huh?" I said, then leaped out of the way as the glass bubbled beneath me. "_Woah!_"

A huge square of the glass stopped bubbling and shot up one, two, three, five, eleven, twenty-something stories high. "A glass hotel," Percy noted. "Smart."

Artemis thanked Hestia, then guided the army into the hotel, from which light was already glimmering.

"Okay, in through the revolving doors, now...pick whatever room you want..." Thalia repeated over and over, pushing a couple of ten-year-olds in. She looked at both of us. "I'd get some sleep, too, if I were you. Big day tomorrow."

Percy and I exchanged glances. "Yeah, I'm going to bed," I told him. "You too?"

"Actually, I think I'll hang around a little longer," he looked pointedly at Thalia. "But I'll see ya."

I shrugged, trying not to show jealousy. Because I wasn't jealous, you know, of him and Thalia. "'Kay," I said indifferently, turning around to go the the revolving glass doors.

"Wait--" he touched my shoulder so I'd turn around. Then he pulled me into a hug. "G'night," he finally said, letting me go.

I half-smiled and waved. "Bye."

The last thing I heard as I pushed through the door into the shining crystal lobby was Thalia: _Oh, disgusting! You two are bad enough as it is..._

Smiling, I walked into an elevator and chose a floor...seven. I supposed any room would do. Number 714 was empty, so I opened the door, turned on the lamp, and grinned at what I saw on the bedspread.

"Thanks, Hestia," I mumbled as I changed into the flannel pajamas she must've put out for us. "You really thought of everything."

I climbed under the thick luxury blankets and prepared to turn off the light, exhausted. Gently, I took the magnolia out of my hair and laid it on the nightstand. True, it was one of the cheesiest things he had ever done for me. But it was also one of the sweetest.

But the moment I turned the light off, something was strange. My hand flew to my pajama collar and I choked back a cry. I don't cry.

But my necklace from Camp Half-Blood was gone.

"RISE AND SHINE, SLEEPING BEAUTY!"

Six hours later, I groaned and peeped out the window. "The sun's not even out, Thalia!" I moaned. "Go away!"

I buried my face in my pillow and tried to kick her out of the suite.

"Tough," she said, plopping onto the bed. "There's your clothes. Get dressed, it's raised at sunup."

"Whatever," I muttered, grabbing the shorts and t-shirt Hestia had prepared. "What's this 'raising' thing have to do with it?"

"You'll see," she said slyly, which annoyed me.

I slipped on the sneakers messily and snapped my bedhead hair into a ponytail. "There," I narrowed my eyes at her. "Happy?!"

She snorted. "Gorgeous. Percy'll love it."

"What does he have to do with it?" I slammed the door behind us as we started hopping down the stairs -- faster than the elevator. I patted Thalia's head like a puppy. "You've been gone a little too long, Thal,"

"_Oh_? I've been gone too long?" she laughed. "Who's the one who's totally oblivious?"

We pushed our way out of the revolving door, into the still-dark morning, and I tried to ignore her comments. "Come on, let's find the rest of the army," I told her, looking around.

"You _are_ oblivious," she continued, stopping even as I kept walking forward determinedly. "Percy's totally in love with you, and you can't even see it!"

I froze. Slowly, turning around, I spoke softly and quickly. "He does not love me and this isn't helping us at all. C'mon."

It seemed that all of the thousands of troops were there all ready. I filed in toward the front, where Bianca and Artemis stood.

I tried to say, "Lady Arte--"

"SHHH!" Thalia and Bianca shushed me violently.

I shrugged apologetically and stepped back. "Sorry, but what's so _shhh_?"

"Watch," Bianca whispered, pointing to the the square where we'd gathered -- where the ball had been last night. Except now, at all four corners of the square and lined up on all four sides, the twelve gods towered silently.

On this side, it happened to be Poseidon on the left, then Artemis, then my mother. I gulped. Nice coincidence.

"And what are they doing?"

I just got another shushing. Suddenly, even the whispers of the army behind me fell silent and the wind stopped. All at once, twelve pairs of hands raised high in the air.

"_Liono!_" All of the gods and godesses cried together in Greek. I nearly jumped as a great rumble went throughout the Platform. In one smooth motion, the glass pavillions, temples, and the huge new hotel turned to liquid crystal. They quickly melted back into the Platform floor, as if they were water. Now, the whole thing was just one smooth expanse of glass.

"Wow," a voice behind me said. "Impressive. Was anybody still in the hotel?"

I whipped around to face a messy head of black hair. Ah, Percy. I rolled my eyes. "What do _you _think, Jellyfish?"

"_Makraino!"_

They'd done it again. The north and west edges of the now-blank Platform lengthened and grew, stretching out and out and out until you could barely see the end. We were on the southern side, so our part of the Platform didn't change much.

"Also impressive," Percy continued. "And good morning to you too, Wise Girl."

"Thanks," I said sarcastically. "Sleep well before coming to your doom?"

"As always."

"_Labyrinthos_..."

I stopped talking and held my breath. Labyrinthos -- the Labyrinth.

"..._Xypno!"_

Immediately, one long, pure note hummed through the air, as if someone struck a bell. Now, the glass floor a couple hundred yards in front of our square really _did_ slosh like water, and its waves began sloshing higher and higher. But it wasn't an accident where they were getting higher -- the floor was becoming the walls of the Labyrinth.

I wanted to say _oh, I get it, _or something to the effect, but nobody was talking.

Soon, the watery walls had grown to over two stories high. Another bell-like note rang out and they solidified, cooling crystal.

The gods and goddesses cried, "_Teleiono_," clapped their hands at once, and walked away from their square formation. People went back to whispering nervously.

"Uh, okay," I turned to Percy nervously. "That was weird."

"Ohhh, boy," he pulled me along as he began running. Thalia, Bianca, and Artemis had already started towards the beginning of the Labyrinth. "It's beginning."

"Thanks for all the warning time," I scoffed as we jogged toward the entrance. "Are you ready?"

"Of course I'm not ready."

"Well, that makes two of us."

"Guys!" Thalia called, waving us over. "Percy, you and Annabeth and us are going to lead the troops. We decided."

I was about to say okay, but an ungodly _cough_ from behind me made me stop.

"Annabeth," Athena said softly, come from who knows where. "I need to speak with you for a moment."

I looked up at her in terror. What did she want, now of all times?

"Um," I began. "Yes, Athe--Mom?"

"Come over here," in ten-foot form, she pushed me to the side, then knelt down so her eyes were at the same level mine were. Out of the corner of my vision, I saw Poseidon ambling over to Percy, and Artemis turned to Thalia seriously.

"So," my mother began. "I see you were about to begin the Labyrinth with your, ah, friend, Percy Jackson. Correct?"

"Yes," I felt a lump growing in my throat again.

She nodded, apparently trying with difficulty to not say something. "Well. I understand that you have friendships with other half-bloods, which is good. Yes, good. But...did you hear about the other prize at the end of the Labyrinth?"

I nodded. "Kronos' tomb...but Percy's supposed to kill him." I resisted adding _duh_ to the end.

She waved the thought away. "Yes, but other than that?"

I shook my head.

"_New York City_."

My eyes widened. "Oh, my..."

"Exactly. You understand."

I did understand, too well, I think. I looked at Percy again, whose father was talking low and fast to him like he was in a football huddle. I turned back to my mom.

Oh, _no_. This same thing, sort of, had happened with the city of Athens. Zeus had put on the spectacle. Athena, of course, had won that city because her gift (olive tree) was greater than Poseidon's (horses). But now, since gods cannot fight Kronos' army, I guess it's whoever has the better son or daughter wins the prize.

But _New York_? Ay, caramba.

Exactly what would a New York taken over by Athena or Poseidon look like?!

"Ath...Mom," I said meekly. "What are you saying I have to do?"

She stared me down. "Please, Annabeth. I'm counting on you to get to the center of the maze first, and at any cost. Do not start at the same place as Percy or I will -- _we_ will -- be disqualified by Zeus himself. Do not collaborate with him. Do not ask him for help."

"But--"

"Please."

I wiggled away from her. "No, Mom! This is about killing Kronos -- not getting a prize!"

"That it is, obviously, and it is our primary concern above this...er, competition. So you will, of course, not try to open the tomb first -- you may let the half-blood of the prophecy take care of that. Just _touch_ it is all I'm asking."

"I still don't want to have to avoid Percy."

"Dear Annabeth," she looked me sadly in the eyes. "I don't like taking you away from your friends, but tell me truthfully: which do you value more? Someone you've only known for a few years..." she looked at Percy and Poseidon. "Or your mother? Who's known you all your life, and who needs your help now more than ever?"

In retrospect, there were a thousand things I could've said then. Something along the lines of, _Oh yeah? Well, if you've known me so long, how come you never drop by and visit? _Or, if I was feeling gutsy, _Percy's been a heck of a lot better friend in three years than you have my whole life! _ But when she looked at me like that, my fists just clenched. It was like she was asking me to choose forever. Family or friends, family or friends...

"Okay," I said weakly.

Her face unfolded into a bright smile. "That's my girl," she pulled me into a slightly awkward hug. Mostly because she was ten feet and I was under six. "Make me proud, Annabeth," she whispered, waving goodbye as she dissolved into the crowd.

"What was that about?" Bianca asked as I joined them again.

"Nothing," I muttered. "I'm going to need to start at another entrance. Where can I find one?"

She looked shocked, but pointed to the left. "Just keep going and-- wait, why do you need to start somewhere different than us?"

I didn't answer Bianca except to say thanks. "Thalia," I tugged on her shirt.

"What?"

"Can you come with me?"

Instead of asking why like I expected, she just looked miserably back at Artemis. "Do I have to?"

"I'd really like it if you could," I pleaded. "C'mon. I'll die in there without someone else and you know it."

She sighed and whispered something to Artemis. The goddess looked sadly at Poseidon and Athena, then nodded slowly. Thalia bowed and jogged back over to me.

"Let's go," she slung her bow over her shoulder. "They're starting any second."

Just as we started running toward the other entrance, we nearly bowled over into someone.

"Sorry," I said automatically. But then, "Percy!"

"Annabeth," he looked at me uncomfortably. "What was all that with your mom?"

"What was all that with your dad?" I replied.

He started to say something, but I stopped him.

"Please," I mumbled. He didn't know a rhetorical question when he heard one. "Let's not talk until this is over."

He looked a little hurt, a little aggravated as we continued to another identical entrance. Thalia and I stopped in front of the glassy but dark opening. How had they managed to make a glass maze in the middle of the day so _dark_? I exhaled, tried to loosen up a little bit, but Thalia stopped me.

"You're tense, get over it," she said gently. "Zeus...he's about to announce the beginning of the, uh, race."

"Race?"

"That's what it's turning out to be, isn't it?"

I must have looked as ready to barf as I felt, because she patted my shoulder and smiled. "We'll be fine."

The thundering voice of Zeus came rumbling down the glass floor, as if microphoned. "ALL DEMIGODS AND LESSER BLOODS, PLEASE STEP FORWARD."

I gulped, and stepped toward the doorway with Thalia.

"ALL GODS AND GODDESSES, PLEASE LEAVE THE LABYRINTH PREMISES."

Our parents and Artemis walked quickly away to the edge of the Platform.

My breath came in spasms. I didn't know what was wrong with my lungs, so I held my breath for a second until my mind calmed. Good, calm, rational.

"SOLDIERS OF OLYMPUS..." Zeus called. You could've heard a pin drop. "BEGIN!"

A shotgun fired and I sprinted off from the entrance. Thalia looked at me, amused.

"I don't think you're supposed to run all five miles of the Labyrinth," she informed me. "At least, you'll be the only one running."

Blushing, I slowed to a quick walk and took out my bronze knife. "Let's see..."

The opening part of the Labyrinth was just a cut crystal straight path -- but it stopped abruptly and you could go left or right.

"Left!" Thalia cried quickly.

"How do you know?" I asked skeptically.

She pointed to her left hand, crackling with an electric energy. "It doesn't hurt. How else are you going to interpret this?"

I looked closely at the webbed lightning around her hand. "That could be a fluke."

"Doubt it. Let's go left."

Grumbling, I followed her into the left passage. "Fantastic," I moaned. "Now there's three ways to go!"

"I don't have three hands," Thalia said stupidly.

"I noticed," I strode to the dark passage on the far left. I couldn't see anything. "Can you see down there?"

"Nope," Thalia told me. "None of them."

Picking up one of the rough balls of quartz that littered the labyrinth floor, I tossed it as hard as I could down the invisible walls of the pass. No sound. "That one's not a dead end," I muttered, picking up another stone and heading to the middle passage. Throw. No sound. I went over to the third pass, the last one, and picked up my final stone.

Thalia clearly thought this was a waste of time. "Hey, Annabeth," she tried. "I don't think any of them are dead..."

_Splunk._ The rock hit a wall somewhere at the end of the pass. I raised my eyebrow at Thalia.

"Ooo-kay," she said. "Just kidding, then."

"It's one of these two," I pointed to the two on the left. "Can you stand right in the middle of them?"

She did, and soon her right wrist was glowing with spiky lightning. "Right," she nodded as we headed down that direction.

The glass opened to a huge, circular room with no less than eight possible directions. I let out a deep breath. "All right, no big deal," I strained my voice. "Just...eight...ways...to choose from."

So the rock-throwing started again.

Luckily for us, we narrowed it down to two passages again. "Whew," I sighed as Thalia did a wrist-test in front of the last two. "How do you suppose the Jellyfish and the rest of them are getting through this?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. My guess is, Percy's dead meat without much help. I'm sure the rest of the Hunt won't be having a lot of trouble, though...Artemis must have given them _some _kind of hints."

My ears perked up. "Did she give you hints?"

"Right again."

"She _did?_"

"No, I mean, the direction is right. Again."

Disappointed, I followed her down the passageway and hoped this wouldn't take too much longer. I was a little anxious about Percy. Gosh, I hoped he wasn't dead. I couldn't take much more drama.

"Woah!" Thalia yelled as we entered the dark, glassy room. "Dead end!"

She was right -- no ways out but the way we came in. Not even a closed door.

I took a couple steps forward. "What in the world..."

But I soon leaped back in pain. A small tile of glass below my left foot had vanished without a trace, leaving a bubbling square of lava. "_Ouch!" _I screamed, clutching my melting shoe. "Thal, the floor...I think it just burned me!"

She looked at my shoe, horrified. "How?"

"The floor--" I took off the shoe and stamped on it to put out the flames. "The floor went away...and lava..." My words trailed off as I focused on the floor. There was something funny about it.

"Let's go back," she said, already turning.

"Wait!" I grabbed her collar without moving my head from the ground. "Do you see that?"

She gave me a sarcastic look. "_No_, Annabeth, I don't see a thing. What's the brilliant idea?"

I pointed to a pattern on the glass floor. After nearly dying from it, it was easier to spot. "See it's there--don't step on it!" I cried as Thalia took a step forward. "Just listen: those are runes."

"Runes," she repeated.

"Yes," I replied. "But they're Phoenician, not Icelandic."

"Meaning...?"

I shook my hands excitedly. "It means that they'll look like letters! See?"

She studied a rune carefully, then shrugged. "Yeah. How does this help us again?"

I bit my lip. "This has to mean something." I scanned the walls. "Ha! Look here!"

We huddled in front of a barely visible etching in the walls. With a swipe of her hand, Thalia removed most of the crystal bits from its surface so we could read.

Το όνομα της αγάπης πιο κακόβουλη παιδί

"Greek," Thalia said satisfactorily. "Which we can _really_ read."

"Yep," I squinted closer. "The...name of love's most...mischeivous...child," I finished with some difficulty. I turned to Thalia. "So what's the name of love's most mischievous child?"

Thalia looked like she was supressing a giggle.

"What, Thal?" I groaned.

She _did_ giggle this time. "It's really easy -- Cupid, of course," she laughed out loud. "Which really fits you and Percy--"

"Oh, shut up," I rolled my eyes as I shoved her shoulder and faced the runes. I didn't know Phoenician, but they were close enough to English alphabet-based letters that you could tell which was which. A bunch of letters were scrambled in a random order. "I think we have to spell it."

Thalia stepped forward. "I'll go," she offered confidently.

"No," I stopped her. "I mean, thanks, but you're stronger than me. If I...go down, it'll be better if you survive."

She frowned at me.

"To help Percy," I finished lamely.

She gave me a look. "Annabeth, in case you start to fall again, I'm going one step behind you."

I didn't want to argue with her anymore. "Fine," I agreed, turning to the first rune I was going to step on. "Cupid...'C'..." I put my foot gingerly on the first tile. "_Aaaaaayyy!"_

The lava blistered my shoe until I was fanning the flames all over again.

"What did we do wrong?" Thalia peered at the lava. "Are the runes supposed to be confusing?!"

"No," I muttered angrily. "I was stupid. Actually, you were too, but mostly me. _Cupid_ is the _Roman _name for Eros. We have to spell Eros!" I searched for an _E_. "Found it," I told her. "E..."

I hardly put my toe on the tile this time. Miraculously, it remained glass. No lava. No fire.

We laughed in disbelief. "Awesome," she congratulated me.

"Thanks," I said, finding the _R_. "Okay, R..." I stepped on the tile and Thalia followed on the _E_. "O..." I caught my breath. _S_ was in the dead center of the tiled floor. "Can you jump on this at the same time as me?" I asked her.

"What, because it's the last one?"

I nodded. "And it's in the middle. I'll bet it leads out of the room."

"All right," Thalia bent her knees. "One...two..._jump_!"

We leapt to the middle tile together, and just in time. The second our toes brushed the glass, all the other tiles crumbled with a sound like a small earthquake.

"W-w-w-w-woa-a-a-ah-h!" she grinned, shaking up and down. "G-g-guess it was r-r-r-ight-t-t."

In place of the tiles, a glass staircase blossomed gracefully from the floor. But the staircase led down -- as if into a basement.

"Sweet," I exclaimed as the shaking stopped. I hopped from the tile onto the staircase. "After you, madam," I told Thalia.

She jumped in a very un-ladylike manner to the stairs and bounced down two at a time. "More choices," she sighed as we came to a room of two passageways. "I'll do it."

She stood in front of them and showed me her left hand crackling with energy. "Left."

But just as we began to enter the left passageway, two screams -- _our _screams --pierced the air.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!" we shrieked, hands fumbling madly for our weapons.

Three large, hairy creatures had pounced from the archway.


	8. The Cooking Spray Returns

**A/N: Hey all! Sorry I waited to post the last chapter for, like, a month. I was faster with this one. I know it's getting a little complicated, but that's what these books do when they're in a series (see Harry Potter #7 for proof). Also, I want to give extra kudos to Thai M. Zoofquesque, Totally CRAZY and Hyper, believeinthegods, and Bubblegum11 for reviewing longest. Actually, you all get kudos too (hands out M&M kudos bars from elementary school). Now...where were we? Oh yeah. Here:**

We screamed our heads off.

"WHAT THE HE--" Thalia began to shriek.

"Thalia, Aegis!" I hollered at her, getting my own bronze knife.

But fuzzy creatures backed away, hands up, though I couldn't really see much in the darkness.

"Don't let them fool you," Thalia whispered, trembling. "_The knife_, Annabeth! Use your knife!"

"NO, NO, PLEASE NO!" one of the monsters yelped. "PLEASE DON'T USE YOUR KNIFE!"

I, who had been rearing my arm back for the stab, paused. That voice.

"_Grover_?!" I asked in utter disbelief.

"Yes!" he squealed, coming forward into enough light so that I could see him. His fur, glossy and fresh, wasn't matted with blood anymore. His horns were stiff and shiny. "Now, please! Put that thing down!"

I quickly sheathed the knife. "Yeah, sure, Grover, but who _are _your...uh, friends?"

He took a low bow and raised his hands to the furry figure beside him. Instead of being scared, instead of sounding funny, he came across as very serious.

"Behold," he said in a low, solemn voice. "Protector of forests, wonder of the woodlands..."

Oh boy.

"Friend to fawns, great idol of satyrs: PAN!"

It was as if a veil had been lifted from our eyes. The "monster" next to him seemed to be five feet taller all of a sudden and shone with power.

A satyr, but not -- older, wiser, taller, and the fur of his hindlocks shone gold instead of brown. His silver-and-white hair curled magnificently around his sun-baked face. He carried a golden set of reed pipes.

"Pan!" we cried, falling to our knees. "Grover, you found Pan!"

"No -- Pan found _me_," Grover said grandiosely.

"As grateful as I am for your re-introducing me to Olympus," Pan said slowly and pleasantly. "I must remind you that eight hellhounds are less than a quarter of a mile behind us."

Thalia and I scrambled to our feet. "What?!" I cried.

"RUN!" she screamed.

"No, better!" Grover held Thalia back and swung her and me behind him and Pan. Pan! After all these years! I was tempted to think Grover was mistaken...but here he was, glowing golden as he sat before us. Strangely, we seemed to be on the back of the third furry thing, a creature I'd recently forgotten about.

"Come on, Torrie!" Grover urged it, patting it above its purple silk boxers. "I'm very sorry we have to ride you, but you are the fastest way..."

Wait. Purple silk boxers? Only one monster wore underpants...

"You named the minotaur _Torrie?_" I said in disgust.

"All animals have names!" Grover told me indignantly. "But we're losing time and the hellhounds are upon us! Let's go!"

With an angry snarfle, the minotaur lurched forward and sprinted down the halls.

Thalia bumped along behind me as the walls whooshed by. "How did you get the minotaur to give you a ride?!"

"I didn't," Grover humbly motioned to Pan. "Pan did."

"Thank you," I turned to Pan. "But _how_ many hellhounds are behind us?"

"Eight," he repeated calmly.

"Fantastic," I muttered, ducking to avoid the glass ceiling. For a brief moment I wondered if I could see through to the top, but I quickly pushed the thought away. "So which is faster: the minotaur or a hellhound?"

"I doubt you'll have to wait long for an answer," Pan replied. "Look behind you."

I whipped my head back, stomach lurching. Eight huge black dogs sprinted toward us as drool flew off their faces. We were fast on the minotaur -- but they were faster.

"Knife ready?" Thalia asked.

My fingers brushed my bronze knife. "Yeah. Aegis?"

"I'm -- wait," Thalia turned to Pan. "Lord Pan...how can you afford to be in the Labyrinth?"

Pan's eyes widened ever-so-slightly. "You mean to tell me that the law keeping gods from entering the Labyrinth hasn't changed since I left?"

"Afraid not," Thalia said apologetically. "We're very grateful to have you..."

I slapped her shoulder to get her attention. "Oh, for Pete's sake, Thalia, there's a hellhound right behind you!"

She tapped her bracelets quickly and thrust the huge silver disk into the hellhound's face, chipping one of its fangs.

"Take _that_," she muttered as it let out a low groan and collapsed. Its friend, still running behind us, snarled at Thalia before galloping a little faster to turn on me. "Are they all going to be this easy?"

I didn't really have time to answer, as I was trying to hold my hellhound off by kicking it in the eyeball while stabbing at its throat. I stabbed one time...twice...three times...and on the fourth, his angry silhouette exploded into gold dust and he quit trying to shred me.

"Lord Pan," Thalia explained. "We're sorry to kill an animal, but he was a-- Lord Pan?"

The white-haired satyr was fading like a hologram. His tanned and weathered face gave us one more smile before he said, "Unfortunately, I was responsible for your, ah, visitors, the hellhounds. The assistance of gods in this Labyrinth is strictly prohibited by ancient laws."

"But, Pan!" Grover cried. "Where will you go?"

"The Council of the Elders," he replied, barely a wisp of smoke. "I'll tell them you...Ill tell them..."

"Wait!" Grover called as Pan faded.

"I'll tell them.." he whispered one more time.

Then all we could hear was six more hellhounds coming behind us and the minotaur.

"Grover," Thalia finally blurted as she crouched behind Aegis. "Help us already!"

The satyr, stricken at Pan's quick departure, had been looking like a deflated balloon. But he fumbled for his pipes, finally snatching them up and putting them to his lips. "I think it goes like..." He played a couple notes -- a little sharp.

_FWOOSH! _A huge stalagmite rammed its way through the glass floor in front of us. The minotaur whinnied like a scared horse and galloped around it. The detour had slowed us down and the dogs were looking greedy.

"What was that?" I demanded of him. "Now we're even closer to the hounds!"

He looked panicked. "Uh, um..." he tried the same tune, but this time on key.

With the innocent tinkling of chimes, crystal vines whipped down from the ceiling and swept four of the hellhounds off their feet.

"Nice!" Thalia and I congratulated him at the same time.

He blushed. "Really? It was just something new I picked up..."

But a terrible echoing voice soon interrupted him. "_Percy...cy...cy...cy!" _It called, loud enough for it to hear. Then another voice, Percy's, yelling. He seemed to be right above us, and I heard him running, his feet pounding the ceiling.

"What the...?!" Thalia shook her head and swore. "Excellent. Now Seaweed Brain's near death again."

I squinted my eyes at her. "Look, can you not call him that?"

"You call him that all the time!"

"Exactly."

Her face lit up with recognition. "You _do _like him, don't you?"

"Wait," Grover looked confused. "Annabeth likes Percy?"

I didn't have time to roll my eyes. "There won't be anything left to like if we don't jump in there and save his butt! Who knows what's happening to him?"

The voice had come from above us, I guess since we were in the underground part of the Labyrinth. I slowly stood up on the charging minotaur -- no small feat, as it was practically like standing up during an earthquake. If I looked closely at the dark glass ceiling, I could just make out Percy's running footprints.

"Thalia," I said without moving my gaze. "Hand me Aegis."

She sounded like she was about to protest, but decided against it and handed over the shield. Reluctantly.

I gripped Aegis, a disk of silver metal engraved with Medusa's head, and braced myself. "Grover, Thalia -- cover your heads," I instructed.

"Uhhh," Grover twitched. "Why would we need to...?"

_SMASH_.

In a millisecond, a zillion things happened.

First, an Aegis-sized circle glass shattered, of course, but thankfully it didn't cut any of us.

Second, Thalia and I learned that Grover can indeed scream like a girl.

Third, Percy tripped above me when the circle of glass vanished in front of him.

Fourth, I caught his arms as they were about to fall and swung him beside me on the minotaur.

And fifth, once he was safely next to me, I acted like a dumb girl and tackled him with a hug. Ugh, I disgust myself.

"Uh...hello, Annabeth?" Percy said, suffocated by my hugging.

"What's wrong with you?" I insisted, letting go. "We just heard you yelling up there."

"I thought we weren't talking until this was over."

"Of course we're talking, Seaweed Brain," Actually, I wanted to slap myself for forgetting. Oh well. I could give him the cold shoulder later. "For instance: CAN YOU PLEASE GET YOUR SWORD AND HELP US WITH THESE HELLHOUNDS!"

He looked behind us. "_What?!"_

"Help," I repeated. "Or get out of the way!"

He uncapped Riptide and maneuvered past Thalia and Grover to get to the hellhounds. Only two were left, but, long as Riptide was, it couldn't possibly reach both of them. By the time it did, one of the two hellhounds would have ripped Percy to ribbons.

"Percy!" I stopped him. "I got this one, you get that one."

He nodded. As he drew back Anasklumos, I flipped my dagger in my hand. The instant the hounds were close enough, we sliced through them. Glittering gold dust rained from where they'd stood.

"Nice going, Jellyfish," I acknowledged with a sigh of relief. "But why were you running up there?"

He rubbed his neck, wincing in pain. "I'll tell you if you'll tell me something."

My heart skipped a couple beats. _No, I don't like you, Percy. Can you tell Thalia to shut up for me?_ "Uh...what?" I finally said.

"When will I ever outgrow that name?"

My heart settled again. "What, Seaweed Brain or Jellyfish?"

"Jellyfish."

I laughed for the first time since that morning. "Never. You and the jellyfish have about the same amount of brains."

"Oh," he took a moment to comprehend this. "Hey...!"

"Nope, nope. You need to tell me what you were running from so we'll know," I pressed.

He looked sheepish. "I'm not really sure. They're like...like...cobras."

"Cobras?" I echoed.

He nodded. "Yeah -- but they're really fast. On second thought, they're more like boa constrictors, they tried to squeeze some of the girls to death..."

Thalia spun around so fast she nearly knocked Grover off the minotaur. "WHAT?! Who?!"

"I don't know their names," Percy said. "But they were, you know, already dead. Ghosts."

Grover cleared his throat. "Annabeth, Thalia, can I tell Percy the news or what?"

"What news?" Percy asked, scooting over on the minotaur's back so we could both sit comfortably.

Grover told him.

"Seriously?!" Percy exclaimed. "Grover, that's amazing! Where is he?"

"At the Council of the Elders," he replied miserably. "They should be the first to know. And he's a god, so that's why the hellhounds were after us."

Percy scratched his head. "Wow. I can't believe it. How did you find Pan?"

The satyr explained that, after he'd stopped to stand guard at the cave mouth back in the canyon, he'd caught a whiff of cappucino and trotted over to check it out (he forgot to apologize for not standing guard). The Starbucks was in a town about five miles away -- Grover's strong sense of smell was a little _too_ strong. In any case, he got a cup of coffee and finally figured it out: _the coffee got hotter as he got closer to Pan_. It took him all day and all night to find the god, but once he did...well, the rest is history.

"So you just started the Labyrinth like we did?" I asked.

"Not exactly," Grover admitted. "Pan swore he could transport animals and satyrs such as himself anywhere in the world...but we were a little off..."

"Like, underground," Thalia snorted.

Grover ignored her, because he saw something before we did. We were about to slam into the wall at the end of the passage.

"WOAH, Torrie!" he yelled at the monster. "We're going to have to get off, guys!"

We hopped off the minotaur's shaggy back and got used to being back on our feet. "Wait," Percy looked more closely at the monster. "Were we riding on the minotaur?"

"You're slow," I said. There was something strange about the wall. Was that...a map?

He still wouldn't let go of the minotaur deal. "But...how...?"

I sighed. "Pan did it, Seaweed Brain, but let's focus on the issue at hand!"

"Well," Percy observed the minotaur. "He got new underwear."

"Percy! Geez!" I cried as I pointed to the wall. "We don't care if the minotaur imports his briefs from Timbuktu! There's a map on this wall, and I'm pretty sure it's a shortcut, too!"


	9. We Need Dramatic Battle Music

_**A/N: Hey y'all! I've been gone a while, plus summer's busy (in a good way! :D), so I've been waiting a while to do this chapter. But now it's here! Sorry it's short. The next chapter will be longer...with A LOT of drama, I think. Enjoy! OH YEAH -- and thanks a billion for the reviews! You guys write the best!**_

We inspected the dark, glassy wall, and even Percy forgot all about the minotaur and his underwear. Etched deep into the crystal was a criss-crossing web of lines, dotted with one glowing spot of light. The lines formed an intricate pattern inside a rectangle -- exactly like the labyrinth -- and in the middle was a large room.

"A map," I repeated. "To the tomb room."

"The 'tomb room'?" Percy crossed his arms. "What are you, Dr. Seuss?"

I shoved him and pointed to the middle of the map. "This is where we're trying to go. And this is where we are, right...here," I moved my finger to the left, to the light spot. "I think."

"Do we have some paper or something?" Thalia asked. "I don't know about you, but I can't memorize a map just by seeing it."

"Same goes for me," Grover agreed.

"And me," Percy said.

"You don't _need_ to memorize it," I smiled. Finally, something was going right. "If I'm right..."

"Again," muttered Percy.

I ignored him. "If I'm right, then you just -- touch it."

"Wait," Grover looked confused. "Touch what? The light?"

"No, where you want to go. This is how you get through the Labyrinth so quickly. You find these maps, and you don't have to find your way through the maze."

Thalia nudged me away. "Well, let's try it, then!" she moved her hand to touch the tomb room on the map.

"Thalia, wait--!"

But with a bright flash and a _swoosh_, she'd already left.

Percy's eyes grew huge. "Woah."

I wasn't so amused. "Oh, isn't this fantastic!" I grumbled, kicking the wall in despair. "_Ow_!"

Percy touched his pocket, making sure Riptide was ready. "Let's go," he said, moving his hand to the wall. "We can't let her stay alone."

Grover and I sighed together and got ready to touch the map. "On three?" Percy said.

"Fine," I muttered. "THREE."

I could only see a glimpse of Percy looking annoyed before our hands hit the wall and a flash of white light nearly blinded me. You know that feeling you get when you're on a roller coaster before the huge drop, and your stomach kind of does a backflip or two? Yeah. That happened. The white light didn't go away as we flew into who-knows-where. But finally...

"Oof!" I squeaked as we hit the glass floor.

Percy had landed beside me, wincing. "That's gonna hurt tomorrow."

"No kidding," I checked my elbow, which was now flaming red with a big, round scrape. Great -- a strawberry burn. "Where's Grover?"

No sooner had the words left my mouth than a huge flash brightened the room. A tall, gawky satyr came spinning and screaming through the light, and we heard a crunch as he flopped to the ground.

"Ow," he whispered weakly.

A skinny girl with a shiny black bob and freckles jogged over to us. "Hey," Thalia said. "Where's the tomb?"

"Good question," I scanned the huge-but-empty glass room we'd fallen into. It seemed to be above ground, because there was no ceiling anymore. There was also no tomb. "Nowhere."

"Maybe Kronos went out for a coffee break?" Percy suggested hopefully.

I paced the room. "Ancient architecture laws say the tomb should be in the center," I reasoned. "Symmetry and all that. It should be right _there_." I stomped my foot on the ground in the middle of the room.

Quickly, I jumped back like I'd just lit a firework. The ground rumbled, shaking beneath me, and a long shape of the glass floor melted into molten gold. As the golden coffin rose from the floor, my heart sank.

"Gee," I half-smiled. "Looks like we found it after all, huh, Percy?"

I turned to look at him. Percy's face was quickly changing to the uncomfortable color of pale mushrooms, which isn't a color anyone's face should be.

"Let's check the maze map again," he mumbled. "I don't think we've found the right room. This feels...weird."

Grover stopped nursing his scrapes and popped up beside Percy. "Good idea!"

"Hold up, you can't just turn away from what we've been looking for all this time!" I cried.

"The guy has a point," Thalia stroked her chin thoughtfully. "We come all this way and now we just open the tomb and stab him? It's too easy."

"We can at least try," I pressed, and Percy nodded grimly.

But then Thalia sighed, "Well, Grover, I'll race you to the exit when that tomb pops open."

The word bit into my mind like a fang -- _race_.

Suddenly, my mother's words that I'd long forgotten about rushed back to me.

_Please, Annabeth, I'm counting on you to get to the center of the maze first,_ the words echoed in my head. _Just touch it is all I'm asking._

I didn't have time to think out what I was doing, and the second Thalia's words were out of her mouth, Percy's head and mine whirled around to face each other. Our mouths and eyes were wide open with sudden understanding...

And then we sprinted. We'd carelessly wandered away from the tomb and it was a mad twenty-yard dash, thanks to the huge room, to touch the coffin. Percy had a small head start, but I was faster. I gained on him until we were neck-and-neck. Ten yards to go...five yards...three yards...with a last burst of speed I shot ahead and let my fingertips brush the gold surface of the tomb.

But that rush you get from winning? Yeah, it went away in about half a second.

"Thank you, Annabeth," a loud voice laughed from behind us.

We all jumped back to see who had spoken. "Who was that?" Percy muttered angrily beside me.

I held my hands up like I didn't know, but I was absolutely lying. If there was any voice in the world I could know, it was this one. I couldn't forget his voice if I wanted to.

"Luke," Thalia snarled.

"Correct. And thanks for buying the ridiculous contest I planted into your parents' heads, by the way." Luke's voice said. Black smoke gathered by the far wall, and with a whooshing noise, Luke stepped calmly out of the mist. "It's hard to find a way to get into this awful place, hm? Just so you know, Percy -- if anyone other than the child of the prophecy touches that tomb, it gives anybody from Kronos' army full entry."

"How does he _do _that?" Grover whined, talking about the smoke more than Luke's elaborate plan.

Luke sauntered lazily toward the coffin. "Oh, being part of the stronger army has many advantages, goat boy."

"Part of the stronger army?" Thalia said through gritted teeth. "You mean one of Kronos's _tools_."

"Percy," I whispered as quietly as I could, trying not to move my mouth. "Open the tomb and _kill him_. Now!"

Percy didn't look at me -- I don't know if that was from anger or because it would look conspicuous -- but he did slide toward the tomb as Luke kept yelling at Thalia.

"You know nothing about Lord Kronos!" he growled. "He has twice the power that all the gods have ever had!"

Beside me, Percy tugged at the coffin to no avail. _It's stuck_, he mouthed desperately.

"You, Thalia, could have helped us," Luke continued angrily. "I thought you would. You used to be smart before you..." His voice dwindled off and his eyes flicked to Percy, still trying to yank the top of the tomb off. He strode over and twisted Percy's arm behind his back.

"Ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow..." Percy strained against Luke's grip.

"Nice try," Luke snorted. He let go of Percy's arm and kicked him in the ribs, causing a sickening _crack _to echo throughout the room. Percy crumpled to the ground, clutching his side.

"PERCY!" I cried, running toward him.

"Let it go, Annabeth," Luke told me. "He'll be dead soon, once the rest of us appear."

Thalia looked horrified. "The rest of us?"

Luke turned and placed a hand gently on the coffin. "Yes," he said simply.

Behind him, something strange was happening mid-air. It was as if someone had ripped space apart. And a terrible sight came out of the gap in the air: hundreds -- wait, _thousands --_ of monsters of every type you could imagine, cyclopes and harpies and furies and hundreds of huge, grotesque snake that must have been Percy's cobras. They poured out like a plague of locusts into the huge room, grinning and snickering. They probably were deciding which of us looked tastiest.

Luke looked pleased at his power, but then he seemed to remember something and sombered up. "Spare that one," he ordered, pointing to me. "Don't touch her."

As much as I hated everything he stood for, the part of me that knew the real Luke melted a little bit.

He was still Luke, who still loved me even if he didn't know it. He was just confused, and I could help him.

"Kill the others," he finished tartly, waving his hand toward Percy, Thalia, and Grover.

"NO!" I shouted, guarding Percy with my arms. "You want to kill him -- them -- you'll have to kill me first," I said, trembling.

Luke looked like he was about to say something, but a beautiful sound interrupted him. We turned around to see Thalia, playing a smooth, clear note on a silver wooden flute.

"Actually," she said, putting the flute away. "You'll have to kill all of _us_, too."

The air shimmered behind her. Artemis' army, looking a little confused but still ready to fight, materialized around us.

"The Hunters!" Grover cried excitedly.

As soon as they saw the army facing them, they drew their bows. Some of them had knives, too, and a couple carried swords. I looked back and forth from the Hunters to the monsters, and I realized with a jolt that we were almost perfectly matched.

As the cobras to either side of him hissed, Luke's expression changed from terrified to sublimely confident. "Fine," he said quietly, standing straighter. "The battle begins."

He snapped his fingers.


End file.
